Writer footnote on following page

I have a paragraph that is split across a page, with two lines on the first page. The page has several footnotes already. I then specify a footnote on the first line of the paragraph. This footnote appears on the following page and follows the numbering of the previous page–I specify that numbers restart on each page. This behavior is reasonable, but it is confusing for the reader.

What I want is the paragraph to start on the following page so that the footnote is on the same page. Is that possible?

I don’t think this is possible on an individual basis. The idea to add a manual page break before is excluded because an edit before this paragraph could cause a huge blank space to be generated (calling for a manual removing of the break).

The algorithm for footnote placement is quite complex and can lead to “hesitation”. Text is flowed in the page from top to bottom. Footnotes are added at the bottom of page and pushed progressively up. When both boundaries meet, a new page is allocated.

Before that, we may meet a situation where available space is not sufficient to hold the whole footnote: the anchor is in the few “critical” ( roughly 1-3) last lines of text. Allocating next page 1-2 lines earlier to have the anchor and footnote on the same page would create a space large enough for Writer to reconsider its decision. The need to break this vicious circle results in what you see.

Note that the situation is the same as inserting page position for a reference, though appearing more rarely.

What you can try is to play with footnote area parameters.

  • Open the page style definition for your text
  • Go to Footnote tab
  • Instead of Not larger than page area, choose Maximum footnote height and set a suitable height

This will change the whole document appearance, sending some notes on next page, but could cure the specific occurrence.

Alternatively, to avoid separating anchor and note, you could keep Not larger than page area and increase Space to text and Space to footnote contents (with asymmetric values for more aesthetic result).

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