Create a footnote in just one step. Just as easily, see how to make footnotes in older documents span across columns.

Woman holding a book. The left page is a black and white surfer image. The right page is text with footnotes.

Note: You’ll need the latest version of Adobe InDesign (2017) to see these enhancements to footnotes. 

One-step footnotes

Place your cursor in the text and right-click. Select Insert Footnote and type your footnote text. A reference number is placed in the text and your footnote appears at the bottom of the text frame. If created in the latest version of InDesign, your footnote will span all columns of a text frame automatically.

If you’re working on a document created in an earlier version of InDesign, you can do this manually. Read on.

Right click within the text, click Insert Footnote to insert a footnote.

Make a footnote span columns

Select the text frame and right-click. Choose Text Frame Options. On the Footnotes tab, select Enable Overrides and Span Footnotes Across Columns, and then click OK.

Right click on footnote, select Text Frame Options, Enable Overrides, Span Footnotes Across Columns to span across columns

Make all footnotes span columns

To make all the footnotes in your document span columns in text frames, choose Type > Document Footnote Options. On the Layout tab, select Span Footnotes Across Columns, and then click OK. 

Select Type > Document Footnote Options > Span Footnotes Across Columns to span all footnotes in document across columns

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