Would like to be able to list all Notes similar to how Indexes are listed

[philipt18]

I'd love to be able to view a list of all my Notes in the static left column just like I can for Indexes, and have a quick way to search through Notes and show all the matching Notes. This would be very useful for reviewing Notes, making sure multiple notes don't cover the same thing, etc. Like an Index I'd like to be able to click on a Note, and have it jump to the page it's on so I can see it in context. It would also be useful to be able to double-click on the note marker and if the Notes column is showing, have it jump to that note in the list as well.

[MikeTO]

+1, that would be great.

Here's a workaround for now.

Open your document. Using the Notes panel, choose Convert. Covert all footnotes or sidenotes to endnotes.

Scroll to the end of your document and find the probably overflowing endnotes text frame. Select all and copy to the clipboard. Paste into a text editor for review and then close the document in Publisher before you accidentally save it. 🙂

 

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, MikeTO said:

then close the document in Publisher before you accidentally save it

Or, make a copy of the document and work on that, to make sure you don't accidentally damage it.

[philipt18]

Yes, converting to endnotes had occurred to me, but that would mess up the layout of the book. It would be useful for seeing all the notes for reviewing, but it wouldn't let me see them and the layout at the same time. Seeing the layout at the same time would insure that the notes I change don't mess up the layout by moving to another page, etc. Sometimes that doesn't matter, but sometimes it messes things up.

I am also not sure what would happen if I did that, as I re-number my notes every chapter. I do this by disconnecting the text between chapters, and renumbering per Story. If I switched to Endnotes, wouldn't that re-number all of my notes?

[MikeTO]

1 hour ago, philipt18 said:

I am also not sure what would happen if I did that, as I re-number my notes every chapter. I do this by disconnecting the text between chapters, and renumbering per Story. If I switched to Endnotes, wouldn't that re-number all of my notes?

If you restart numbering every chapter then after conversion you would actually have endnotes at the end of each chapter.

[walt.farrell]

9 hours ago, philipt18 said:

Yes, converting to endnotes had occurred to me, but that would mess up the layout of the book.

Note that Mike did not suggest changing to endnotes as the solution to your problem. He suggested temporarily changing, just so you could copy the notes to an external editor easily. You would keep the actual book as it is currently formatted, just using the copy of the notes in the external editor to perform your review.

[philipt18]

On 8/29/2023 at 6:44 AM, walt.farrell said:

Note that Mike did not suggest changing to endnotes as the solution to your problem. He suggested temporarily changing, just so you could copy the notes to an external editor easily. You would keep the actual book as it is currently formatted, just using the copy of the notes in the external editor to perform your review.

 

Sure, but some of the editing needs to be done in place, as footnotes move between pages if they change length sometimes, and in the end I need to edit them in place. Having them in the left column and also seeing them in the layout would be very useful for reviewing footnotes and making sure everything is correct.

[MikeTO]

20 minutes ago, philipt18 said:

Sure, but some of the editing needs to be done in place, as footnotes move between pages if they change length sometimes, and in the end I need to edit them in place. Having them in the left column and also seeing them in the layout would be very useful for reviewing footnotes and making sure everything is correct.

I think this is a need that could be met with scripting someday when that's available. With a script, you could leave your footnotes the way you want them and run the script to see them all at once.

One feature that Publisher lacks is go to Next/Previous Note. Not only are there no commands but with footnotes you can't even arrow up/down between them. I imagine this will be addressed at some point but until then I'll write myself a Next/Previous Sidenote script, if scripting comes first.

[philipt18]

I just wanted to add another reason for this feature – consistency checking. It would be very useful to be able to search for a word, see the matching footnotes, and check for consistency. For example, when quoting from a source, am I formatting my quotes in the same way? Also, if I have an explanatory note about a person mentioned in the book, I may have written a similar note later in the book if the person shows up again. Being able to search notes, and see the matches, would be very helpful for preventing this.

[MikeTO]

1 hour ago, philipt18 said:

Being able to search notes, and see the matches, would be very helpful for preventing this.

It's easy to search notes, just not see them all at once.

To be able to search notes, apply a paragraph style with Note Body Style. Then search for that paragraph style with Find and Replace. I do that regularly but I have to click each search result to see the entire note.

For your need, I'd suggest my original suggestion which is to convert all footnotes to endnotes, using a temporary copy of the document of course. Then you could review that consolidated list and switch back to the working copy of your document to fix any inconsistencies.

Good luck.

[Old Bruce]

On 9/20/2023 at 12:57 PM, MikeTO said:

...  I do that regularly but I have to click each search result to see the entire note.

I set up a keyboard shortcut key for this. Look in Preferences in the Shortcuts in Publisher > Text > Find Next, and Find Previous and  I set them up to be Option + Command + G and Shift + Option + Command G for (near) compatibility with BBEdit's shortcuts.

[philipt18]

As I just had to reset my 1200+ footnotes to the default formatting, which of course wiped out any modifications such as italics, I'd really really like to see this feature implemented for reviewing footnotes.