Is it possible to number endnotes by chapter?

I need my endnotes to re-start numbering at 1 for each chapter.

I gather that it should be possible to do this by going to Tools > Footnotes/Endnotes and changing the value for Counting. However, I only get the options ‘per page’ and ‘per document’. I have lots of H1s, so I wonder why it doesn’t assume (more or less correctly) that these are chapters (it’s ok if it assumes this, most of them are). I can’t find anywhere in the documentation where it says what I might have to do to define what constitutes a chapter or to otherwise fix this problem.

I’ve also tried to re-start the numbering by simply clicking beside a an endnote (in the endnotes section) and clicking ‘Restart numbering’ but this does nothing. I can’t find any other way to re-start numbering.

(It perhaps goes without saying that I can’t simply number all the end-notes manually. It will be 100 page master’s thesis with a probably a couple hundred endnotes, so it’s important that they automatically number themselves correctly, restarting at ‘1’ each chapter.)

Thanks so much gods and mortals of the Open Source community. You folks rock my world.

Steve

This solution will renumber endnotes on a per-chapter basis by gathering them at the end of each chapter in which the anchor appears. I do not know of any way to renumber endnotes on a per-chapter basis and have them gather at the end of a document. This solution works by defining a section for each chapter:

  • Highlight the text (including all content) of the first chapter.
  • Insert > Section…
  • On the Section tab, enter a meaningful name (e.g., “ch01”)
  • On the Footnotes/Endnotes tab check Collect at end of section / Restart numbering (Start at 1).

That will give you endnotes that appear at the end of the highlighted section (the first chapter). Repeat for each chapter.

That works like a charm. :wink:

Thanks for the response. However unfortunately this doesn’t work for the constraints that I’m required to abide by for my thesis. Namely, I need all the endnotes to collect at the end of the text, not at the end of each section. I notice that this option is not available for endnotes. What to do?

Using sections works fine but there seems to be a bug or I’m doing something wrong. I have my chapter title appearing in the page header (as is usual). It appears correctly until the notes go over onto the right hand page. There the chapter name changes to the very first chapter (e.g. Introduction) instead of the current chapter.

Since it does not appear that defining sections will work for my particular needs (for details, see the answer by oweng to this question and my comment in response) maybe there is another way to define chapters instead of defining sections OR to manually ‘restart numbering’ which, as I noted in my original post, I haven’t figured out how to make work.

I’d really appreciate any help if anyone has some words of wisdom.

Thanks so much in advance.

I am surprised you need the notes to both be collected at the end of the document AND to restart numbering on a per chapter basis. Which style guide are you following? Usually restarting of numbering is dependent upon the notes being collected at chapter end, hence the LO dependence of options.

Yeah, the university (UQAM in Montreal) uses an uncommon style guide (Bouthat) so I’m not sure how common my problem is. Still, it seems to me that there is almost surely some way to do this in LibreOffice, no?

It is by the way quite common in books for there to be endnotes that collect at the end of the book and re-number by chapter.

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I agree with “montrealsteve” - it is common place for the endnotes to be organized and restarted on a per chapter basis. To not have this feature built in seems, to me, to be ludicrous.

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Go to Tools > Footenotes/Endnotes

Change Counting to Per chapter.

I do not believe this is possible for Endnotes. For Footnotes, yes, but there is no Counting option under the Endnotes tab in the indicated dialog.