Hi,
I am a new (and fascinated) Scivener user. I immediately asked for footnotes. How does the classic notes, it is best to be at the bottom of the page? I can not find it anywhere:(
Please, help.
Best regards,
L.A.
Since, basically, Scrivener doesn’t know about pages as it is not a page-layout program, it cannot show footnotes at the bottom of non-existent pages. That is left to the “Compile” function. Until you compile, you can choose between seeing them as “inline footnotes”, when they appear within the text inside grey bubbles, or “inspector footnotes”, in which case they will appear in the inspector on the right of the window, which you need to have open with the footnotes showing, rather than other forms of metadata.
Which is better is a matter of personal preference and the amount and length of footnotes you need to use. I prefer inline footnotes basically, but if annotating a reference translation for my students, I use inspector footnotes as there are so many of them and some are so long that the main text becomes almost invisible.
Furthermore, when you compile, you can choose to compile to your “classic” footnotes, or to endnotes … again, the choice is yours.
Mark
Somewhere in the Scrivener manual (which is a very large document) it states that the basic philosophy behind the program is to provide an environment in which you can hack out the text of whatever you are writing. Layout comes later, and for most of us is handled by using a word-processor like Nisus, Mellel, or (horror) M$ Word. Most of these make it easy to change from endnotes to footnotes, or vice-versa.
Footnotes seem to have gone out of fashion in the English-language publishing world. It is difficult to find a book nowadays that does not use endnotes instead. In fact, I cannot remember when I last saw one.
Cheers, Martin.
As the others have pointed out, you don’t have footnotes at the end of pages in Scrivener’s editor, as it is not a layout program. Rather, they go in the inspector, like this:
They become “true” footnotes when you Compile, depending on the format. (Compiling to RTF is best if you want to take your document to Word with end-of-page footnotes.)
Hope that helps.
All the best,
Keith
Thank you guys!
Until now I used regular text editors, such as Pages or LibreOffice. It was not until I learn a new philosophy of this program. I’ll try to deal with it 
Now I’m writing a PhD and the footnotes are the most important thing for me.
Thanks again,
Lukasz.
Oh I am so confused!
Having worked on a 200 page book in Scrivener (now complete), and having added footnotes (inline - in bubbles in the text), I’m ready to print.
I compiled the Scrivener text into an .rtf document. But, I cannot see the footnotes anywhere! Should I, in .rtf?
I assume it is better to tweak the formatting once inside Word, is that correct? Do I just drop the .rtf text into a Word document (6x9" is the preferred book size), and go from there?
Again - where are the footnotes hiding?
Sorry for the ignorance; I’m in academics and have no clue how to ‘self publish’ like this. Steep learning curve?
Thank you in advance.
It sounds like you might be opening the compiled RTF document in TextEdit, which is the default application on a Mac to open that file type. TextEdit doesn’t show footnotes (or headers or footers); you’ll need to use a more complete word processor like Word in order to see that. Word can open .rtf files and will show you all the formatting; just right-click the document and choose “Open With > Word” or launch Word and then use its Open menu to select and open your compiled document. Once you have the document open in Word, you can make whatever tweaks you like and can also resave as a .doc or .docx file if you prefer.
Thank you for the explanation on Mac and .rtf.
I tried opening the .rtf with Word, and still absolutely nothing. I toggled a few of the View options, and footnotes converted to endnotes option, and still nothing. Footnotes are entirely missing.
Interestingly, I compiled the Scrivener manuscript into a PDF file, and voila … all the footnotes are there.
This doesn’t help me, however, as I need to edit and format for publishing.
What am I doing wrong?
Thanks,
Alia
Are you using the beta? Footnotes in PDF output isn’t something in the standard version yet. It can only handle endnotes. The beta can optionally lay out footnotes though with the aid of a new and better format conversion system.
But even in the beta, RTF footnotes should be working. Did you re-compile the document? TextEdit’s implementation is so simple that it not only fails to show footnotes, but will erase them if you edit something and then save it. So if you went from Scrivener to TextEdit and then to Word, that could explain why they are gone.
Amber, my error: the PDF was endnotes, not footnotes.
I had actually done what you suggested, and recompiled and opened with Word from within the Word menu. This time, indeed, the document shows all the mark-ups and edits from within Scrivener!
Thank you so much … very impressed with the rapid support.
Best,
Alia