All sidenotes are resized and their frames fitted vertically. It shows this dialog:Įnter the new width and press Enter/Return to start the script. To fit the note frames vertically in CS5.5 and earlier, run the separate script sidenotes_width.jsx. In versions before CS6, the height of frames is not adjusted automatically. To change the width, therefore, simply change the setting in the object style (see below for details) or run the script described in the next paragraph. The width of the text frames is set in the notes' object style ( sidenotes). That's all you need to do: there shouldn't be any need to apply any style to the new note: the object style applied to the sidenote has all styles defined in it. In earlier versions, press Ctrl+Alt+C (or Cmd+Opt+C) to fit the note's frame to the text. If you create an empty sidenote and add text to it, the frame adjusts automatically in CS6 and later. Type the relevant number or the underscored letter at Mode: or just press Enter/Return if the selection at Mode: is the correct one. To add a sidenote, position the cursor where the note reference is supposed to be and run the script. These are the options shown in the script's dialog: You can opt to add a sidenote in either of three ways: (1) add a new empty sidenote frame and type text in it (2) select some text, create a new sidenote, and let the script move that selected text to the new note or (3) create a new note and copy the contents of the clipboard into it. New sidenotes are best added using the sidenote_add.jsx script. The script creates the same six items that were described above. To set up sidenotes in a document and add notes manually later, just run the sidenotes script in that document. An object style for the note frames is added, called "sidenote".A cross-reference format is created, called "sidenote".Any following paragraphs in the same note use "Footnotes". So if you used the paragraph style "Footnotes" for your footnotes, then the script creates "Footnotes_numbered" and uses that for the first paragraph in every note. Any paragraphs after the first one in the note use the style without "_numbered". The paragraph style used for the document's footnotes is used for the sidenotes "_numbered" is added to the style's name.A numbered list is added for use in the paragraph style's bullet & numbering section, using the character style created in (2) for the note number.A character style is created for the note numbers.If a character style is set for the note references in the document's footnote options, then that style is used, otherwise the script creates a new character style.The script first creates and/or recycles some styles and some other required items. Click OK or press Enter/Return to run the script.Īll details (such as typeface, pointsize, width, and the position of the notes) are handled by styles so that any options you want to change are to be changed in the styles see Some details, below. At Paragraph style: you can limit the scope of the script to footnotes that use a particular paragraph style. To suppress all numbering, uncheck the box. At Numbering you indicate whether the notes should be numbered: check this box to add note numbers and references in the text. You're asked to enter several things: the width of the sidenote textframes and the distance between the sidenote and the main text. It displays this dialog (the values shown are script defaults):
Open the document whose footnotes you want to convert to sidenotes and run the script. You can convert all notes or just notes that use a selected paragraph style. The script (sidenotes.jsx) converts footnotes in a document to sidenotes. When new notes are added, the numbers are updated automatically. The notes are added to the document as anchored text frames, so that when the main text is edited, the notes travel with the note references. The screenshot shows an example of a document whose footnotes have been converted to sidenotes. Like InDesign's footnotes, sidenotes can be numbered by document, by section, by spread, or by page. A second script can be used to create new notes in a document. (After finishing the scripts and these pages I became aware of Martin Fischer's script dealing with sidenotes in CS3 – see this thread on The script can be used to set up sidenotes in a new document, too, both numbered and unnumbered notes. Based on the method for dynamic endnotes first outlined by Peter Gold and formalised in InDesign by Bob Bringhurst, and following on from the scripted approach of this method (see Dynamic endnotes), this page provides scripts to convert InDesign footnotes to sidenotes (or "margin notes") and to set up a sidenote system in new documents.