Footnote numbering and Section breaks

[Guest]

I would really appreciate assistance with this one! I use Windows XP
Professional and Word 2002.

I have a four chapter document in which the footnotes are set to restart at
the end of each chapter via the insertion of a section break. This works
fine, but the problem comes with the insertion of a table mid way through one
chapter that needs to be in landscape orientation. Because I want landscape
to apply to this page alone, Word inserts a section break immediately above
and below it (thereby isolating this page). This plays havoc with footnotes
because it restarts them mid way through the chapter. Word will not allow me
to manually over-ride this without messing up the rest of the document: i.e.,
when I tell it to number the first footnote after the landscape page #7
(instead of #1), it automatically changes the whole thesis from "restart each
section" to "continuous". So Word will EITHER let me have "restart each
section" OR override the footnote numbering on this page, BUT NOT BOTH! This
seems to be a glitch in Word ... or am I missing something??

Richard.

 

[Stefan Blom]

Even if Word 2002/2003 allows you to set endnote options differently
for different sections, this simply doesn't work (as you've seen).
Instead, for the table section, add the notes manually by typing them
and formatting them as superscript.

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP


in message
news:[email protected]...

 

[Stefan Blom]

Clarification:

The workaround I described does not fix the underlying problem: that
numbering is restarted where you don't want it to restart. Instead it
provides a way to manually create a separate set of numbers or perhaps
letters which is for the table only. Assuming that the table is the
only item on the landscape page, you could easily type footnote
numbers manually and type the footnote text in the bottom row (merge
the cells and hide the borders).

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP


in message

 

[Guest]

Dear Stefan,

Thanks for your suggestion.

First, am I correct in understanding you to say that this is a real glitch
in Word, or has it been corrected in later versions? If not, might I suggest
that this be forwarded to the appropriate people?

Second, as to your suggestion for getting around the problem: I don't think
you've quite got the extent of the problem, since it doesn't refer simply to
this one page (the table). Unfortunately, there are 60 out of sequence
footnotes in the chapter that come AFTER the landscape page, so manually
inserting "quasi-footnotes" at the bottom of each of these pages using
superscripts is unfeasible. Apart from the amout of time this would require
to ensure formatting is maintained, the chapter would also loose the
identifying marks of footnotes: i.e., the half line for complete footnotes
above it (dividing it from the main text) or full line for continued comments
from the previous page. All up, this would be very messy and not worth the
effort.

Can you think of any other alternative?

With sincere thanks,
Richard.

 

[Stefan Blom]

My point was that manually adding "fake" footnotes in the landscape
section would enable you to set the "Restart on each section" option
(for the document), which should fix the numbering for the real
footnotes. Are you saying that numbering doesn't work even if you set
this option? Has it ever worked correctly in this document?

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP


in message

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

No, Stefan, it won't work because what he's trying to do is this:

1. Chapter 1 begins with Section 1. Footnotes start at 1.

1. Chapter 2 begins with Section 2. Footnotes restart at 1.

2. There is a landscape table in the middle of the chapter. It is Section 3.

3. Chapter 2 resumes with a portrait section, Section 4; footnotes restart
at 1.

There is no way around this; you can either have footnotes numbered
continuously throughout the document or restarted in each section; whenever
you have a section break in the middle of a chapter, you have trouble. Beth
Melton and I experimented with this at one time, and, even if you set the
footnotes in Section 4 as continuous, they still start with the wrong
number.

One possible (but not ideal solution) would be to defer the landscape
section to the end of the chapter; in that way at least the footnotes for
the chapter would be continuous, and the footnotes for the table would be
handled separately (either as real or as fake footnotes).

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

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[Guest]

Dear all,

Thanks, Suzanne. You clearly understand my problem, but alas, there seems to
be no solution (given that moving the landscape page to the end of the
chapter would badly interrupt the flow of the chapter).

It is amazing to me that Word is unable to handle such a comparatively
simple request: to restart footnotes at the end of each chapter and to have a
single landscape page in the middle of one of them! Incidently, I would add
that page numbering is also affected by the landscape page, but this CAN be
manually over-riden quite easily. Should (and how should) this problem be
brought to the attention of MS programmers, so it can be fixed for future
editions of Word?

So is this the end of the conversation, or are there any further suggestions?

Thanks again,
Richard.

 

[Stefan Blom]

Well, now I get the problem (finally). Thank you for clarifying!

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP


in message

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

It's a really serious flaw that (like others in this area) severely limits
Word's use for any books with serious documentation. I'd be interested to
know if Word 2007 shows any improvement in that regard. The addition of some
new documentation features is promising, but if they haven't fixed these
"bugs," the effort will be useless.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

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all may benefit.

 

[johns468]

What a frustrating problem these page numbers are when you change from
one document portion to another. HOWEVER, there appears to be a
work-around by formating the document as a "Master Document." You go
to the "view" selection to set this up. Then you can at least redo
pages for each section. I haven't checked it out for endnotes, but I
suspect with some there are some work-arounds there. Check out in the
topics aid: "Use the same formatting in the master document and
subdocuments." I am using a Mac, MS Word 2002. If I could do images
reasonably, I would go back to 5.1 for Word in a flash!

 

[Stefan Blom]

Unfortunately, master documents are not likely to fix any problems. In
fact, they are more likely to cause problems. See
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/General/RecoverMasterDocs.htm.

What problems are you having with changing page numbering between
sections?

 

[johns468]

When I shifted my doc from footnotes to endnotes, pagination ended
where footnotes began. Having charts as an appendix was a problem as
well. Three different paginations! I worked through the help
suggestions, but until I looked at this website and then redid my
"help" for the zillionth time, things finally clicked. I have not
printed yet, but with a doc of about 100 pages, I expect things to be
ok, given my preview. I have been locked into this dilemma for several
months. Thanks for a website that has ideas.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Some late comments for Johns468:

I have no idea what this means:

When I shifted my doc from footnotes to endnotes, pagination ended
where footnotes began.

But common problems with footnotes are addressed at this webpage:
http://word.mvps.org/faqs/formatting/footnotefaq.htm

See if any of them help. Or describe the problem in more detail (it kinda
sounds like you fixed it, but if the way you fixed it is by using Master
Documents, that may lead to more problems later).

There are also many useful links for long documents indexed here:
http://daiya.mvps.org/

You can't be using Word 2002 on a Mac. If you are using Word X, people do
say Word 2004 is the closest to Word 5.1 of all the versions since, so you
might consider upgrading, not that Word 2004 is perfect.

If you think this might be a Mac-specific issue, there are MacOffice
dedicated newsgroups, which might be helpful now or in the future.
See here for Google/Entourage gateway to newsgroups for MacWord, MacExcel,
and other MS programs for the Mac:
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/community/community.aspx?pid=newsgroups>

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I think he means that there were no page numbers on the endnotes pages, or
that numbering restarted there.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Bob S]

No, Stefan, it won't work because what he's trying to do is this:

1. Chapter 1 begins with Section 1. Footnotes start at 1.

1. Chapter 2 begins with Section 2. Footnotes restart at 1.

2. There is a landscape table in the middle of the chapter. It is Section 3.

3. Chapter 2 resumes with a portrait section, Section 4; footnotes restart
at 1.

There is no way around this; you can either have footnotes numbered
continuously throughout the document or restarted in each section; whenever
you have a section break in the middle of a chapter, you have trouble. Beth
Melton and I experimented with this at one time, and, even if you set the
footnotes in Section 4 as continuous, they still start with the wrong
number.

One possible (but not ideal solution) would be to defer the landscape
section to the end of the chapter; in that way at least the footnotes for
the chapter would be continuous, and the footnotes for the table would be
handled separately (either as real or as fake footnotes).

I suppose that the Word coders would claim that they have no way of
telling which section breaks represent chapters, so they cannot
restart per-chapter.

It seems to me that they could fix this by adding a check box (and
supporting code) for "restart footnote numbers on odd-page section
break". Nobody is likely to need one in the middle of a chapter.

They could also fix it by adding a "chapter break", which would be an
odd-page break in wolf's clothing. That would be more work, though it
would allow them to do other things if they were ambitious, such as
have optional built-in "this page left blank" pages.

Bob S.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

They could also accomplish this by allowing users to decide when to restart
footnote/endnote numbering. As an example, if you use endnotes, you can
"Suppress endnotes" for any given section, so that in the given example, you
could collect the endnotes for Chapter 2 at the end of Section 4. A similar
option to suppress restarting note numbering would do the trick.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

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all may benefit.

 

[Stefan Blom]

Or if the footnote options actually worked as advertised, so you could
set them per section. I believe someone said that it does work in Word
2007.

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP


in message

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I think you're right (about 2007); I do seem to recall that I cheered over
that one!

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.