For anyone interested – putting the above title in the search window didn't produce anything I mean. And I welcome better ideas. I work with a Dutch language version, so I hope I use the right terms.
Working on juridical textbooks with hundreds of sometimes long footnotes, I sometimes come to the next problem. It is possible to automatically let long footnotes break over two pages (see other threads to get explained how). But suppose there is another footnote marker a little after the 'long' one. This seems a bit too much for Indesign. Both markers and both footnotes go to the next page, leaving a big white gap, in mid-paragraph, at the bottom of the preceeding page.
My solution:
- cut the second footnote marker;
- add the right footnote number as normal text (probably in superscript) at that spot;
- paste the footnote marker at the end of the top paragraph on the next page;
- make a text style with text color set to paper (white);
- apply this text style to the pasted footnote marker.
Now it looks like the footnote marker is on the first page, and the entire footnote is on the second page (the real footnote marker is invisible). If in a later stage footnotes are added or text overruns, you can easily look for the 'white' text style to adapt things.
You can also use this trick when there is either space for the marker or for the footnote text at the bottom of a page but not for both, leaving at least one white line (although to the most of us, that will sound less urgent).
But of course it would be nice if Adobe solves this in a future version (I already suggested them to do so.)
