Can’t I add footnotes in Scrivener?
Exactly what happened when you tried? How did you try? Windows or Mac iOS device? what version of Scrivener? what version of your operating system?
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Yes, you can… Insert > Footnote and the text for it will be an Inspector footnote[1]; Insert > Inline footnote and it will be within a bubble in the text. In neither case will it be at the foot of the page (or the end of the section/manuscript) until you compile the project.
[1] Either highlight the word which you want as the anchor, or else in Project > Project Settings… > Formatting you can set a footnote marker:
Mark
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In addition to xiamenese’s tips, I recommend reviewing the Scrivener 3 manual. Chapter 18 covers using annotations and footnotes, while §20.5 of Chapter 20 discusses linking your citation management program into Scrivener.
You can access a PDF of the manual from Scrivener’s Help menu.
In the iOS app, the Tutorial document in the Help area has information to review. Specifically, you’ll want to read through the document titled “The Editor” for tips on how the iOS app handles comments and footnotes.
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Just to make it a touch clearer :
Once you’ve set a footnote marker (project settings), you can use it by NOT having a word or group of words selected. The marker will be inserted at current cursor position.
But you can still select words first as the anchor. In which case no marker will be inserted to the text.
In both cases, all that will be visible inline after compile is the superscript reference to the footnote.
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I appreciate ALL the replies. Is there anyway in IMPORT a document that already HAS the footnotes? That’s what I attempted to do and the footnotes didn’t import…
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They definitely should be importing, we have support for endnotes, footnotes and comments on import for RTF, DOCX and ODT (and technically DOC as well, but honestly I haven’t tried that in ages since I don’t have any actual DOC files left).
In addition to checking the above, which is where they will go by default, if they really aren’t showing up, try using “Save As” from your word processor to create an RTF file and import that. This is Scrivener’s native format, everything else is going through converters, so you’ll be reducing complexity by trying that.
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And once you find those footnotes, it is good to know that you can decide if you want to see them to the side in the Inspector, or inline. For essayical writing, I almost always prefer inline footnotes to Inspector footnotes. Either way you choose to see them in Scrivener, when you compile your dissertation the footnotes will just be footnotes.
If you are doing work where there will be a whole ton of long footnotes (e.g. some kinds of historical work) inline footnotes might not be the way for you though.
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Yes, and you can make that choice up front as well, in the Sharing: Import options tab, right toward the top. I generally always import as inline so I can see what’s up, and maybe convert (via the Edit ▸ Transformations submenu) on a case by case basis if I feel the notation isn’t worth always being as aware of as I am of the main text.
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