After the last update, footnotes have started vanishing. More precisely: The footnote box itself does not vanish, but its content does. Footnotes that has had content (which I cannot and will not loose!) are all of a sudden empty. I have done nothing to them, as far as I can understand, to make this happen - not even touch them. But I suspect that it happens when I add other footnotes elsewhere in the text, or shortly after. This is a new problem. It has happened a couple of times after the last update - it has not (as far as I know) happened before.
Now it happened again. Two footnotes with crucial information disappeared. This means I have to stop using the footnotes function, or continue to loose important information.
Am I the only one experiencing this problem? What can I do?
I’ve seen one other report on this, also since the update, but so far we don’t have much information about it–like you, the other user just noticed it happening sometimes after having creating a footnote and returning to work.
Could you provide some details about your project set up and how you’re working with the footnotes? For instance, are you using a split editor and going back and forth between documents? Are you always working in the same document from the point where you create the footnote to the point where you see it’s disappeared? How do you create the footnotes (keyboard shortcut, inspector +fn button, etc.) and how do you then return to the main text? Are the footnotes all visible when you add a new one, or have the notes scrolled off the screen (so you can’t see that the content has disappeared)?
If we can find reproducible steps to trigger the note text disappearing, it will be much easier to find the actual bug and fix it. Any more details you can provide may help narrow down the possibilities.
For your project meanwhile, you may want to try using inline footnotes instead of inspector.
We’ve made some progress tracking down the problem of the inspector comments and footnotes not saving. What seems to be happening is that edits made in the comment/footnote before the first save aren’t being registered. You should be able to work around this for now by ensuring that you make another edit to the comment after the auto-save runs, i.e. after the asterisk in the title bar disappears:
- Paste the text into the note, then either Ctrl+S to save or watch to make sure the auto-save asterisk disappears
- Make another edit in the note, e.g. type a letter and then delete it
- Carry on with work as usual
The change after the first save does register to modify the note, meaning that all the previous edits are then saved with that.
We’re working on fixing this issue and are hoping to have an update out within the next few weeks.
Thank you very much. I have, as you also suggested, changed to using inline footnotes for a while. Thank you still for the trick for keeping new notes save. Here are a few details:
- It is not the latest note that disappears: It seems that notes that existed before I added a new note, and that were just above the new one in the comments and footnotes field somehow got infected, and lost its content (became blank), while not existing altogether.
- I am not sure, but I think I worked on two documents when it happened, and it may be that I moved back and forth between documents, but again I am not sure.
- Again I am not sure, but I may have used the shortcut to create the note.
- After creating a footnote, I return to the main text by clicking on it.
- Sometimes there are many footnotes and not all are visible. I am not sure how to answer, but I never actually observed the footnote becoming empty: I discovered that they had become empty just after having added new footnotes.
Good luck with fixing this bug.