Manuscript Blues: Footnote and index mayhem: are there any experts out there who can help?

Michael Sellers Other Stuff

Sorry for the repeated posts about the book but I’m in labor now, trying to deliver the baby, and I wanted to ask if anyone has any insights that might help me clear what has felt like a “Hindenberg disaster” playing out over the last couple of days.  This has to do with Microsoft Word sabotaging the formatted manuscript and causing the footnotes (all 225 of them) to disappear.

I’m a Mac person and I composed the book using Mac “Pages”.  The publisher doesn’t work in pages and offers a MS Word template that is properly formatted for book publishing — and so I converted the manuscript to Word, then loaded it into the template.  So far so good.  It looked fine.  I then went in and spent about 4 hours tweaking everything — getting the headers and footers and all of that right, etc, etc.

That was when I noticed that some of the footnotes were gone.  You could still see the footnote number in the text, and when you hover over the number the footnote text comes up — but there is no footnote at the bottom the of page.

I tried manually inserting a footnote and it caused the program to go nuts ….”repaginating….repaginating”  and then then it would deposit me on the last page of the file.

So I googled it and found out that I’m not alone.

Unfortunately, none of the links offer a real solution because it seems that if you have a big doc with lots of footnotes, MS Word just can’t handle it.

Has anyone else experienced this and/or solved it when they did experience it?

Anyway, I’ve been in touch with the publisher and they also say that this footnote problem does tend to occur in Word (now they tell me)……but they can take a PDF.

So now I’m back in Pages and everything is sweet — it looks beautiful ….except for one thing.

Pages does not have an automated Index creation tool like Word does. You have to do it manually which is a huge job. In Word,there’s a tool and once you flag a word it enters it into the index in the appropriate hierarchy, and then searches the rest of the document and gets all the other appearances.

So my next challenge (with the clock ticking toward August 16) is to figure out how to have both the footnotes and the index. My thought at this point is to complete the document in Pages, then export to word–not with the intention of staying in Word (the footnotes will disappear), but just to create the index. In Word — after making sure that the pagination hasn’t drifted at all — create the index. Then take that index and copy/paste (if it will allow) back into pages, or in a worst case, just manually prepare the index in pages not by manually hunting through the whole book, but just by re-encoding the index created by Word.

The problem with the foregoing is that if Word does clip the footnotes, then the pagination will be different and the index will be off. Grrrrrr…….

I checked to pay someone to do all this but it would take a week.

1. It shouldn’t be this complicated.
2. I should have anticipated that it would be.

UPDATE — 37 MINUTES AFTER THE FIRST POST
So, I decided to google “does mac pages have an automated index function” in the hope that maybe there’s a new version that does have it, and look what popped up as the first google result. This is 37 minutes after posting — in an area where I don’t have any particular SEO status — google is frightening.

17 comments

  • Kevin and MCR …..
    My take on this is as follows. First of all, people ARE swayed by negative comments and negative reviews. Just like they can be swayed by positive comments and positive reviews. At least on this site, the first shot-the main article — is usually positive, or if it is negative, it is so only in a qualified way. And usually when there are negative comments, there are positive ones that sort of balance it out. I’ve noticed that when the contrarians go quiet, it can get pretty quiet all around — people are too busy to comment and if it’s all positive, they just go about their business.

    But MCR, the thought would be — when you are responding here, you’re creating a somewhat permanent record and people stumble across this site and these articles all the time at a point when they are trying to find out more about John Carter, etc — typically after having seen the movie and been pleasantly surprised. Just keep this dimension in mind. I think your attitude is a) not that the movie irrevocably sucks and people should ignore it …. I think your attitude is, b) if you think THAT was good, you ain’t seen nuthin’ until you read he books, so read them!

    The problem is, the comments by themselves are often written in such a way that the “takeaway” for someone reading them is “a”, not “b”, and that is what Kevin is getting at. Just keep in mind that while the site is flexible in terms of comments, I’m in it to preserve and extend the legacy of ERB (as are you and most of the people here), and so anything that works against that is problematic. =

  • “.My point is, the comments from contrarians here are generally well thought out and someone visiting this site for the first time may not get the atmosphere of debate that Michael likes.”

    Well Kevin then that’s the fault of the people visiting this site. If they can’t take the time to actually read the other, more “positive” comments supporting this film then clearly they’re not that interested to start with. Plus not everyone on here is a contrarian. There’s more fans of this film posting on here than the opposing viewpoint.

    “It doesn’t take much to sway a busy person to see a film or not see a film when they are not passionate about the story or don’t know what a movie is about. ”

    That’s because most of what they see are bad movies. It seems anymore that the rule of thumb is that for every 10 movies released only about 1 or 2 of them are worth seeing. Most of them are junk, that’s why there is the big push for opening weekend numbers since I do suspect that most studios know they have a bad movie and just want to cash in before the word of mouth spreads and sinks it. And most people are probably tired of that, of wasting money on a bad movie.

    “But those very same people could enjoy the film when they finally see it. Might as well have them enjoy it now so we can get a sequel then to never see it. I know you’re not a fan of this version, but it’s better to have a decent John Carter movie around even just to stir up interest in ERB’s work than to not have one.”

    Again you’re having this theory that those people will enjoy this film. Will they? Unless you can read their minds you don’t know. They could just as well hate it or just think it was OK, nothing special. As for this being a “decent” John Carter, sadly this “decent” movie instead has linked the name John Carter to “box office bomb” and a director’s unrestrained ego and a studio’s bad decisions. So I don’t think my comments-or the other contrarians-really was or is the deciding factor in someone not seeing this movie. That decision was made by Disney and Andrew Stanton not delivering in the end.

  • Yes, people often ignore film critics, MCR, but many times they listen. If they take the time to read a comment, that could be the comment that sways them or it could be a whole series of comments that sway them. If it didn’t get people thinking, then why bother to post a comment. My point is, the comments from contrarians here are generally well thought out and someone visiting this site for the first time may not get the atmosphere of debate that Michael likes. Many people don’t spend a lot of time on websites and if it’s another comment against JC, it could be added on to all the negative press they’ve already seen and then they are off to another site, but still retaining that negative (or in this case on this site, many multiple negative opinions that are not the usual rude teen age negative posts. you can see on many other sites). Look at all the people who won’t bother to see JC because they think it bombed from all the press coverage of the write down, when in reality it made a ton of money and is still bringing in money and will still be making money into the next couple years at least…. I think Michael posted something about 10 years for many movies to make money. Those people based their decision not to see the movie because of maybe one or two press articles about the write down or what they heard on the radio, or saw on television or the internet about the write down. It doesn’t take much to sway a busy person to see a film or not see a film when they are not passionate about the story or don’t know what a movie is about. And thanks to Disney’s crappy marketing, most people had no clue what John Carter was. But those very same people could enjoy the film when they finally see it. Might as well have them enjoy it now so we can get a sequel then to never see it. I know you’re not a fan of this version, but it’s better to have a decent John Carter movie around even just to stir up interest in ERB’s work than to not have one. We already know more people have been reading the books since seeing the movie, so we know that works.

  • Kevin Sanderson wrote:
    “at first casual inspection of this site, one would take it to be a fan site for the John Carter movie. To see the repetition of so many well written negative comments would give one pause.”

    True from the outside it would appear it is a fan site for the movie but digging deeper it has done quite a bit to promote ERB’s work, not just the movie. As for giving someone pause, all I can say is good. I want people to stop and think and not just “follow the herd” so to speak. This might be off what is being discussed here but I want people to know that this movie is not a faithful or respectful representation of Burroughs’ work, to not have that false assumption-like how people still think Tarzan and picture Weissmuller and Cheeta. Also what about those who didn’t like this movie who never read the book? As Nikki Finke showed, many of them believe this film is faitfhul, primarily due to Stanton and company’s constant “we’re fans” statements. People need to know it’s not ERB’s fault or any shortcommings with the books that caused this film’s problems.

    “But, anyway, if someone comes across an article in search that’s interesting, they may read the comments…”

    Which is the point of commenting. To present another viewpoint. Isn’t that what the Facebook group does? That whole debate a month or so back concering that negative review-I think it was the Detroit News-and their defense, that they’re presenting the opposing viewpoints? You can’t have it both ways-well I guess you could if its your site and a few I’ve been on have but for the most part Dotar has done his best to keep it from reaching that point, despite some really heated moments. But if the person running the site isn’t opposed to having differing opinions expressed then I don’t see the problem. As I said earlier I doubt anyone will believe a stranger they’ve never met and his or her opinion about a movie. Heck people don’t listen to film critics why should they listen to anonymous strangers on the Internet?

  • Wow! Just checked and there’s a ton of code for Googlebot to wade through on these pages. So it may not bother with the comments as it’s too far down the page source code to spider regularly… though I did see a robots-no content, but I didn’t see a no follow tag. Don’t know if that works the same.

  • Comments can come up if the site allows spiders to follow and if Google has been back often enough to deep spider regularly. But, anyway, if someone comes across an article in search that’s interesting, they may read the comments… that’s how I discovered Spaceman Spiff’s early really negative comment on an article about Stanton’s early meeting with the press. He was in the first comments posted. There are other forums I regularly visit and I see the comments all the time in Google searching for certain things those forums are related to, even some of mine sometimes. Just depends on how things are set and how relevant Google feels the posts are in search. There’s a Wikipedia article on JC where the same negative review pops up most of the time and it’s buried deep in the article. I’ve seen comments get the place where a description would go on some pages for other sites. So unless you have no follow or some kind of robots rule on your site, it could happen here, too.

  • I just googled “pointless Mrs. Carter MCR” and the only things that come up were the couple of times I quoted MCR — the comments don’t come up. I don’t think comments get pulled up in search results, do they? Forum postings do. Anyway I didn’t seen any actual comments in the results–just the blog posts.

    I like debate — I just wish people would keep it civilized. For the most part it is……just gets out of hand sometimes.

  • MCR, at first casual inspection of this site, one would take it to be a fan site for the John Carter movie. To see the repetition of so many well written negative comments would give one pause. I know it does in other web realms and I am figuring the same would take place here. I for one am hesitant to see a movie or purchase an item if I read a bunch of negative well written comments (as well written comments and the web do not go hand in hand). I know I wouldn’t have seen JC if I hadn’t read Roger Ebert’s review where he gave it some good words. Everything I heard that morning was so negative.

    I am pretty confident most folks would enjoy JC as that as been the pattern of people I personally know who saw it. The ones who didn’t don’t generally like science fiction.

  • Kevin Sanderson wrote:
    “That’s why hate any negativity here. Some contrarian’s negative comment or opinion can show up in Google results convincing a potential purchaser of the DVD to hold off when in reality, most would have a good time watching the film.”

    Not to get off the topic of this story but how do you know if a “potential purchaser” might enjoy it? They might find it as disappointing as I did or any of the other contrarians. Plus I doubt that my comments carry that much weight. Why would anyone believe what a nameless person says on a web site about a movie? I’m not Roger Ebert.

  • Yup, Google spiders this site all the time. I’ve seen it in results for a couple months now. That’s why hate any negativity here. Some contrarian’s negative comment or opinion can show up in Google results convincing a potential purchaser of the DVD to hold off when in reality, most would have a good time watching the film. Spaceman Spiff and MCR comments have turned up in searches from other sites, too. Spaceman has the unique honor of being one of the first (if not the first) negative commenters on the Internet after the first press screening last summer.

  • Wish I could help, Michael. I used an older version of Word on my last nonfiction book and didn’t have an issue with footnotes. To show you how far out of the loop I am technically, I’d never heard of an index-generating tool in the newer Word versions. I’ve always had to suffer through a couple of excruciating weeks manually creating an index. The plus side to the primitive method is that, invariably, I pick up on a number of textual inconsistencies.

  • If you set your document style in Microsoft Word to Normal, that should keep Word from repaginating. Then use the Print Preview when you are finished to see if the footes are actually still there. Unfurtunatly MS word doesn’t like large files. It has a tendency to lock up. I would try 2 things:

    1. Use the trouble shooting help at Microsoft.com

    2. Try a older version of Word. The current one my be a version with a bug. For that matter see if there is another word editor you can use. You may have to convert it to Adobe.

    Finishing your edits then converting it sounds like you best bet. When I was in colledge I would cheat and use the put all of the footnotes at the end method with the bibliography. In that method you list the sentence and the page it is on.

    That sucks. It’s hard to become a MS word professional all of a sudden. Good luck!!!

  • Hi,

    I did a search on Pages to PDF and
    found several promising hits with potential solutions, hopes this helps.

  • Sheesh you are an author, your job should be writing, not this. Would be nice if you could outsource the technical stuff.

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