Table of Contents

Reinserting Footnotes / Endnotes

If we insert notes correctly in Word, they will be converted nicely to ebook format. Accessible reading systems will be able to identify them as notes and readers can choose to ignore or skip over the notes, if they choose, so that the narrative flow is not interrupted.

You will need to reinsert all notes.

Using keyboard shortcuts will save you time!
Be sure to stretch every few minutes and give your arms a break - copy/pasting a seemingly endless number of notes can quickly contribute to a Repetitive Stress Injury!
Sometimes, you will get a book that uses both numbered footnotes or endnotes as well as some marked by symbols such as an asterisk, a dagger (†), double dagger (‡), or something else. These should just be treated the same as any other note.

Step 1: Prep for Copying and Pasting

To Prep for copying and pasting:

Do no delete the superscript references within the body content of your etext, just the delete the text that you have moved over to a new document

Step 2: Inserting Note References

If you are working with endnotes, do not create a new heading for the endnotes section.

As you come across notes in your document, delete the number in the text and insert a footnote or endnote reference as required.

First, you will need to make sure your notes are set up properly. To update note settings:

Insert Notes as follows:

Endnotes do not require a heading. Even if there was a heading in the original, please remove it.
Some people like to set up the all the numbers, and copy over all the notes once all the reference numbers and links have been pre-set. Have your notes document and your etext document side-by-side, and begin copying the notes, one by one, and pasting them into the space you made for them.

To learn more you can watch the Microsoft Support: Insert footnotes and endnotes Tutorial

Sometimes, you may miss numbers in the text - one tip to catching them is to go back to where you last inserted a note, then Find either the next number, or ^# (which searches for any digit).
After ensuring that your note settings are correct, be sure to save your time by using the keyboard shortcut for inserting notes! Word for Mac uses COMMAND + Option + E for endnotes or COMMAND + Option + F, and MS Office Word 2010 uses ALT + CTRL + D for endnotes or Alt+Ctrl+F for footnotes. For more information about using and customizing keyboard shortcuts, click here.
Sometimes, you will get a book that uses both numbered footnotes or endnotes as well as some marked by symbols such as an asterisk, a dagger (†), double dagger (‡), or something else. These should just be treated the same as any other endnotes.

Alternate Step For Endnotes: Using Split Screen

There is also a method for viewing and editing one document in different places using Word's Split Screen feature.

Once you have prepared the space for the endnotes by inserting endnote references into your text, you can then:

Make use of Web Layout rather than Print Layout, which will allow you to see more of the document in each split screen.

For more information check out the Microsoft Word Support Video: View files in split and multiple windows

If you have any questions, check the archive below, if still not clear, post your question on the Production Q&A

Q&A Archive

Q: I'm working on the book The Gospel in Every Book of the Old Testament. It has a mistake in its end notes. There is one note listed at the back of the book that has no corresponding superscript number in the text. If I leave the note out of the text to reflect the book, the reader will have no way to see the citation since we don't retain the book's version of the list of endnotes. I'm fairly certain I know where the superscript number is supposed to go - is it okay to add it in? Or should I let the mistake stand since that's how the published book is?

A: In this case, you should enter the superscript number in the section if you are confident you know where it goes. This is clearly a typo, and the type of typo that would make accessibility tricky. Good eye.

Q: The book A Different Mirror by Ronald Takaki is converted from a digitized version of the book, which have made some things messy. There are notes in each chapter of the book, which are not linked in the EPUB version. I'm having difficulties locating many of these, perhaps due to the conversion process. How should I approach editing the notes in this book?

Should I edit incorrectly converted words, such as in this sentence:

"… when they are wiUiong to sell" even though this is how they appear in the EPUB version?

A: This is a very low quality digitization of the print version, with way too many errors. Please see my email for more information. I took this book out of production.

Q:I have a question regarding endnotes in “The Love of Strangers”. Words or phrases throughout the text are hyperlinked to a notes section. Each entry in the notes section is organized with a page number, hyperlink and then the note. I’m wondering how to approach these. When insert them as endnotes, I was assuming I would leave the hyperlink. Should I also leave the page number that is listed?

A: You can remove the hyperlinks and page numbers and enter the notes in as listed endnotes in order. Place each not at the end of the original hyperlinked phrase. For example, you first number (1) would go after the phrase "Iranian students." with no hyperlink since the note number is the link. The publisher was trying to be cool with their formatting, but it is not accessible.

Q: My current book makes extensive use of endnotes, which can sometimes appear in the original like this.[4][5] When going through to edit this, should I insert a superscripted comma or something between the 4 and 5 to better differentiate between the two notes?

A: Great question! You don't have to add any additional punctuation. Simply insert the endnotes beside each other. TTS will be able to read them as separate notes, and the links will be separate as well, so there should be no confusion between them.

Q: Another ePub, another novel approach to Citing… Instead of using numbered notes, this book (Better Now: Six Big Ideas…) includes the phrase from the text that the citation is associated with. Could I insert endnotes in the appropriate places, so that this text is navigable? It is particularly confusing because the text in the citation section does not correspond exactly with the text in the body (e.g. "My remarks ended just shy of the five-minute mark" in the Citations section vs. "My remarks ended just shy of my allotted five minutes" in the text)

A: "A novel approach" is an appropriate euphemism :) Yes, whenever possible, we should stick with using the endnote approach as it's much more functional. So, like you say, we can insert a note reference in the appropriate place in-text. The note can then just contain the actual source information without the body text; for example: National Cable Satellite Corporation (C-SPAN). (2014). C-Span – International Health Care Models. www.​c-​span.​org/​video/​?c4486943/​cspan-​inter​natio​nal-​health-​care-​models.

Q: Island of the Blue Foxes uses a style of endnotes that refers to page numbers instead of to endnote numbers. Because of this, should I retain the page numbers in the book? If so, this might be difficult because the ePub version does not note page separation.

A: We can insert the endnotes as usual, and keep the endnote content as is. As you say, the epub doesn't retain page numbers either, so there's no way of knowing where the page breaks are without consulting the print book.

Q: Just to add to the previous question about Island of the Blue Foxes: What if there are no numbered references to the end notes? They *only* reference the page number where it appears in the book…

A: I took at look at the Island of the Blue Foxes, and there appear to be no in-text notes at all in the book. If that's correct, then we can create a Notes section (H1) which contains the listing of the print notes (just as in the EPUB). This would be just Normal text with H2s for the chapter/section dividers. Does that make sense? Unfortunately we have to work with what the EPUB gives us, and some publishers do strange things.

Q: My current book has both endnotes and asterisk style footnotes. Can you suggest how I might deal with this?

A: We can handle the asterisk style footnotes (annotations) as if they are endnotes.

Q: I am working on Prairie Fire and this is my first time working on endnotes. I am a little confused about three things:

1. If the endnotes are not at the very end of the book (in this book, they come before the Bibliography and Index), do I still move them to the end of the book? Or do I move the sections that come after it back underneath it so it still follows the book order?

2. The endnotes in the book are separated by Chapter headings. Example:

Do I do this: Notes [Heading 1] Chapter 1 [Heading 2] end note end note end note Chapter 2 [Heading 2] end note end note end note

OR do I do this: Notes [Heading 1] end note end note end note end note end note end note

I'm assuming I go with the first option? However, I couldn't find anything in the End Notes in wiki or in the Q&A about how to handle end notes separated by headings.

3. What do I do when they indicate the same number for the endnotes multiple times? (for example, 1 is randomly inserted in multiple sections). How do I properly link them?

Thanks so much!

A: We do not divide the Endnotes under headers, and we use continuous numbers, and do not repeat numbers. We reinsert all the notes as Endnotes with continuous numbers despite what it looked like in the original. Those headings are not make the notes more accessible. You only need a linked note to be accessible, so we remove the headings. There is an Advanced Tip area that shows you how to track endnotes that repeat numbers in the original ebook. Advanced Tips. Notes will always take extra time and attention, so do not rush, go through it carefully until you find your rhythm.

FOLLOW UP Q: So just to confirm, the endnotes are at the end of the book. But the Advanced Tips are telling me to do the end notes at the end of the chapters instead (by creating a section break, changing endnote dialogue settings to "restart at each section", coping and pasting everything in, and then removing the section breaks and changing it back to "continuous"). This means that the end notes will no longer be where they were originally in the book (at the end of the book), but rather, they will be at the end of every chapter.

I apologize if this is very clear and I'm just getting confused. I find the wording on the wiki a little difficult to visualize. I want to be absolutely sure before I do this, because there are 16 pages of end notes in this book and that's a lot of fixing to do if what I'm understanding is not what the Wiki is telling me.

A: Endnotes always go at the end of a book. Footnotes go at the end of a section. Just put them all in as endnotes. I will review the wiki language next week and make any clarifying revisions.

Q: Another question for "Until We Are Free," in the article "6 Unbordable Blackness…" there is an endnote (#38) that does not contain any information. Should I remove the in-text reference to this endnote as I imagine that it could be confusing for the reader if they try to follow the endnote.

A: Yes, you can remove that reference. It was a mistake that slipped through editing.

Q: L'animal langage. Some of the end notes reference one another, which is an issue because in the original the end notes follow every chapter and restart the count each chapter, but in my formatted version, the end notes are continuous across all chapters. Thus, an end note might read "Voir note 28" but actually be referring to note 155 in the newly formatted document. What should I do?

A: That is tricky for sure! Right now we can only create endnotes at the end of the book, so the best thing to do is update the reference to the new note number.

Q: In "Hiding in Plain Sight," the notes are not actually referenced in the text and are listed by page number in their own section. I'm following the instructions from a different Q&A answer (found in the Wiki's Notes section) and have been using H2 for each chapter and formatting the entries as a list. Should I leave in the page number references even though they no longer apply?

A: You can actually insert the notes as proper endnotes and remove the notes section. The book is a scanned version, so the PDF has the original page numbers. The notes also refer directly to the phrase they are citing, which is similar to what occurred in question regarding endnotes in “The Love of Strangers”. This way they will be fully accessible. A quick way to do this is as follows:

I made a video explaining this, along with a quick demo.

Q: I'm working on the endnotes in Atlantic's Last Stop — the original text has endnotes on asides that are within text boxes, which isn't supported by Word, as stated by another question below. Would it work if I took them out of the text box, added endnotes as normal, and put them under a heading named Aside for you to manually code during conversion? I was thinking I could put them between two horizontal lines to signify where the content in the text box starts and ends.

A: For these few text boxes put them a heading that is an aside and I will reformat it in the code.

Q: I'm working on "Looking for Aitkow" and there are some funky endnotes - some chapters (4, epilogue) have superscript numbers in the chapters, but are missing notes in the endnotes list. Other chapters (2, 7, 17) have endnotes in the list, but no superscript numbers in the chapters. In all, there are 7 end notes that are problematic. I've scoured the text and used the search function and cannot find them. Further evidence that they're missing - in the epub the notes are hyperlinked, but the funky notes are not hyperlinked. Let me know how to proceed!

A: Good question! Unfortunately, if there is not note to link it to there is little we can do. We could remove it from the book, or we could add links to the end of the chapter, but then it would not be linked to where it should be. We will have to remove it in this case.

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