Word Macro to Convert Non-Functional Endnotes/Footnotes

Great!!

I had wondered about doing it myself but lacked the stamina to do something to cope with the various alternatives that one can find.

Also it would have remained as a set of down-and-dirty macros with no interface.

Thanks so much Robert.

Robert, thank you for all your work with this.

Now that I have found a workaround to some problems (see below) I am able to make footnotes "live" where before I could not have justified the time that would have been needed. That said, my initial attempts to use the earlier version, and this version of the macro put me off. So I hope my findings will encourage others to persevere and so gain the benefit I have from your work.

I should say that my 'workflow' involves splitting the book file into different docx files for each chapter, so I ignore some of the earlier instructions in your file, however it is still necessary to check that footnotes are not split over more than one paragraph, for example.

Problem and Workaround 1

In the first file I had success with both the footnote numbers in the text, and at the beginning of the endnotes, were superscript. The fact that the macro was searching for the same thing in both locations proved important. I had previously left the default setting of 'delete' in the Old Footnotes section of the dialogue and this resulted in the macro falling over if it was unable to find any footnote number in the text (I have been unable to work out why some numbers give problems.) The workaround I stumbled on was simply to change the Old Footnotes section to 'keep'. Doing this allowed the macro to run successfully to completion, however, any footnote numbers missed in the text are now 'found' in the endnotes and for these missed numbers the footnote is created in the endnotes! Scrolling through the endnotes easily shows which, if any, numbers have been changed from plain numbers to footnote markers. It is no great work to note which numbers are affected and to manually create footnootes at the appropriate place. (I use a duplicate copy of the original docx file to aid in this process.) To give some idea of my findings, the stats for my heavily footnoted file were as follows: (number of footnotes, number of missed numbers) (90, 7); (71, 5); (123, 12); (194, 17); (101, 5); (98, 1); (79, 4); (4, 0). As a final step, the original endnote text is deleted manually.

Problem and Workaround 2

Encouraged by my success I moved on to another book where the footnote numbers in the text were superscript but not so in the endnotes. Here my initial results looked equally encouraging: the macro ran through to completion. However, checking quickly revealed that text had often been identified as footnote text in error. Indeed such was the confusion that resulted I consider it would be impossible to try to sort what resulted. The workaround in this case is to do a search and replace of the numbers marking each endnote and changing them to superscript. (I can detail the steps involved if it would be helpful). This may involve some work (and workaround 1 has then to be followed) but in contrast to the steps involved in manually creating footnotes I consider it to be well worthwhile.

Thanks again for sharing this macro with us.

I may be missing something obvious...

My endnotes are formatted as numbered lists. How to I configure the macro to identify them as followed by a period and a tab?

Robert,

I tried entering the '^t" and it didn't work. It appears that the macro does not read the numbering of a numbered list as the index number of the endnote. So far, I'm doing the conversion manually. Time consuming, but it works.

Here is the relevant section from my macros - I borrowed it off the net and tweaked it a little, presumably Robert did similar, also made the wording a little clearer and defaulted it to [#] notes

4477.pages.txt

I cannot thank you both enough! Works like a charm. Seriously considering to name my first-born after you guys.

Cheers!