The exciting topic of footnotes and endnotes

I realized a few weeks ago that I have rarely if ever written or blogged about footnotes. In this season of pulpy beach reads, then, let's make a 180 and talk geeky, intense, length footnotes.

Inserting a Basic Footnote

The basics are very simple.

Click where you want the number to appear, in the text.

Choose Insert > Footnote/Endnote.

To insert an automatically numbering footnote, just leave the defaults as is. Click OK.

You'll see the number in the text, and a number at the bottom of the page.

Type the footnote itself at the bottom of the page.

Now, what happens when you insert another footnote? Exactly what you might expect.

And you see the new number in the text and at the bottom, with the renumbering done automatically. Also there's less text on the page from the normal body flow since you need more space for the footnotes.

Footnotes (or endnotes) Using Special Characters Instead of Sequential Numbering

Now, let's say you want something other than plain old numbers. You can choose a special character instead; just select Special Character and click the little ... browse button. However, keep to the standard fonts, don't switch to Dingbats, since then the character won't show correctly in the document itself.

Select a character and click OK.

Then click OK again in the Insert Footnote/Endnote window.

You'll see the character in the text, and with the other footnotes at the bottom of the page. NOTE that when you select a character there is no numbering.

Endnotes

Let's talk about endnotes, now. Again, it's what you might expect. Instead of the text going to the foot of the page, it goes to the end of the document.

Select Endnote instead of Footnote.

 

The number (or character) appears in the text. NOTE THAT END NOTES AND FOOTNOTES ARE NOT CONSECUTIVE. YOU CAN HAVE ENDNOTE 1 AND FOOTNOTE 1 IN THE SAME DOCUMENT. YOU CAN CHANGE THIS IN SETUP UNDER TOOLS > FOOTNOTES AND ENDNOTES.

 

And the space to type the endnote text appears at the end of the document.

 

Changing a Footnote

To go back and change the attributes of a footnote, i.e. change it to an endnote or change the character used, right-click on the number in the text and choose Footnote/Endnote.

 

Setting up Footnotes and Endnotes

You have a huge amount of control over how the notes look and behave. Choose Tools > Footnotes/Endnotes.

 

The settings are pretty straightforward. For endnotes, see below.

 

For endnotes, the same explanations apply to a subset of the options.

Comments

[Robert]

I found your post when trying to figure out how to change the character used for a footnote. I was pleased to see your explanation, but disappointed when I didn't see Footnote/Endnote in the menu that appeared when I right-clicked on the footnote character in the text. I've now found that Footnote/Endnote does appear, but only if I right-click near the left side of the character, which takes good eye-hand coordination. Have you found that sometimes Footnote/Endnote doesn't appear? (This is in OOo 3.1.0 under Windows XP.)