I am not trying to convert them to inline footnotes, but just regular old text. Thank you.
I know of no one-step way to do this in bulk. So far as I know, the best way is to
- convert your Inspector footnotes to inline footnotes.
- use Edit->Find by Formatting and search for inline footnotes;
- Use Insert->Inline Footnote (or ctrl-opt-F) to toggle the found inline footnote to plain text.
- Use Find by Formatting again (or shift-opt-cmd-g) to find the next footnote.
- Repeat steps 3 & 4 until all your footnotes are converted.
If you’re into that sort of thing, you could put steps 3 & 4 into a keyboard macro to make this easier. Hope this helps!
If you’re looking for a total one-shot conversion, then you can do the same trick you would to wipe out all italics, or similar. Inline annotations and footnotes act just like formatting, so if you want none of them, select all of the text and then toggle the desired formatting on (turning everything briefly into a footnote) and then off.
Ioa, I tried that. When everything in a Scrivenings view is selected, Insert->Inline Footnote is greyed out and the keyboard shortcut (ctrl-option-F) does nothing. This is true whether scope is one document or a scrivening. IF the scope is one document AND the selection does not include the last pseudo-paragraph break (the one that only appears if you’re in scrivenings mode) then this will work—but then I had my font in the whole document changed to Helvetica. Uncool.
I also tried, after selecting an inline footnote with Find by Formatting, using Select->Similar Formatting. The footnotes were selecting only within the document, not in the entire scrivening. At this point, crtl-option-F indeed changed the footnotes to plain text, but only within one document. Footnotes in the rest of the Scrivening view were unaffected.
I stand by my post in that it is the only way to go through more than one document changing inline footnotes to plain text that works. 
Have I inadvertently discovered an Unexpected Result (bug)?
Ah, Scrivenings won’t work that way, this is true. However it’s probably still more efficient to work through chunk by chunk than footnote by footnote:
- Select All.
- Toggled inline footnote on/off.
- Find next formatting match.
This should provide the most efficient process no matter the density of footnotes. It will skip over binder items that contain no footnotes, and whether there are one or fifteen in the current document, the two-step procedure is equally easy to do.
That definitely doesn’t sound right. One could adopt the above to using Scrivenings instead of single document mode by swapping “Select All” with Edit ▸ Select ▸ Select Current Text.
But I don’t get that kind of result, so that does sound like a bug you found. Anything special I should try? I tried with titles on/off, but otherwise a pretty plain view (no page view, no rulers, default fixed width, etc.). Maybe worth forking to a new thread if you find something promising.
It could be the footnotes in that document had different formatting than those around it. The command does not regard footnote status as similarity, rather it’s going to select text within and across footnotes. Pink highlighted text in inline footnotes will select along with pink highlighted text outside of it.
I did nothing special except select with the mouse. My default font right now is Anonymous Pro (monospaced, but I think that’s all it comes in). I have a three-pane layout (Binder, Outliner, Editor).
… I suspect the font, and will give this a try using an OTF font instead of a TTF font and let you know.
It may be something in the mouse technique, if somehow an uneditable separator line was included (though I think in theory that should be impossible even with the mouse). For comparison, try Edit ▸ Select ▸ Select Current Text, which is like a scoped ⌘A for Scrivenings mode.
Nope, not mouse technique.
I’ll try to post a cut-down, obfuscated version of my project in which a document exhibits the following characteristics:
- Use option-cmd-A to select text in document.
- Use ctrl-option-F to change the entire document into a massive inline footnote.
- Use ctrl-option-F again to remove inline footnote and font changes to Helvetica.
Weird, no luck with reproduction, the font assignment holds steady! I tried installing Anonymous Pro, but it looks like you actually might have set this text to Source Code Pro? Well I tried with both AP and SCP, both worked the same.
Cue Twilight Zone theme…
You’re right, I do have it set to Source Code Pro these days—I suppose I don’t keep good track.
Try this:
- Create some inspector footnotes. My inspector footnote font is currently Fantasque Sans Mono 12.
- Convert those to inline footnotes.
- Convert them to plain text by the select all—double Inline Footnote technique.
If that doesn’t work to display the bug, I guess I’ll just send my Mac to the State Home for the Bewildered.
Regarding the change to Helvetica:
I couldn’t help feeling that I’d run into this before. And indeed I had—check this thread:
This has all the hallmarks of the Apple bug that KB reported. Could this be related?
Could be! I can’t see it for myself, but it seems from that thread that it can be a difficult one to reproduce even with an isolated test app built for it.
Me and my weird fonts… 
The best workaround (if it happens to anyone else) is is to quickly use Documents->Convert->Text to Default Formatting… with the “Convert font only” checkbox ticked.
Another note: After the previous thread, I now recall I stopped using Fantasque Sans Mono as a primary writing font because it seemed to trigger this more often than other fonts. I just went through my prefs and made sure I don’t use it anywhere else. Pity; it’s a lovely font.