Finding all superscripts except for footnote anchors

jeshkhol · May 28, 2022, 10:06am

In an ODT document with lots of footnotes, how can I find all superscripts that are applied to any characters apart from the footnote anchor?

For example, I need to find all cases of “31986”, where the digit 3 is superscripted, but I’m of course not interested at this time in the numerous footnote anchors that are also superscripted.

I tried using Alternative Searching but was unsuccessful.

An idea may be to change the styling of the footnote anchors to nonsuperscript, then search for the remaining superscript characters, and when done resuperscript the footnote anchors. But neither can I find out how to change the style of the footnote anchors since no character style is applied to them.

I’m currently applying character styles where necessary (the document I received was created in another word processor and had none applied), and I’m stuck with the superscripts.

LO 7.2.7.2
macOS Monterey

Grantler · May 28, 2022, 10:26am

SEARCH & REPLACE
In my test document I searched superscript automatic and found the superscripted characters, none of the footnotes.
ALTSEARCH.OXT
Searching for [:::CharAutoEscapement=true|CharEscapementHeight=58|CharEscapement=101::] and [x]Regular Expressions
found the superscripted characters (and no footnotes).
The problem could be that the converted superscripted characters have another scaling. So find out the scaling and search for the specific superscripted texts including the customized scaling… It’s worth a try…

ajlittoz · May 28, 2022, 12:09pm

If footnotes are effectively recognised as notes by LO, some style(s) has (have) been applied during import and conversion. Look at Tools>Footnotes & Endnotes (may be in a different menu under MacOS). The character style for the anchor is shown in Text area and the one for the number in the footer in Footnote area. Usually they are Footnote Anchor and Footnote Characters.

You can then differentiate the text superscript from the footnote superscript.

Standard Edit>Find & Replace can find them.

In F&R, press the Attributes button and tick the Position attribute. This will highlight all the non-ordinary characters, i.e. those which are subscript or superscript (both of them). Press Find All with an empty Find: target.

This will not highlight the sequences which have received a character style with superscript position. In other words, it locates only the direct formatted sequences.

jeshkhol · May 28, 2022, 5:13pm

Thank you both for your help.

Clicking on any of the 1466 footnote anchors sends me to the correct footnote text, so the anchors are linked to the footnotes, which is good news. Thank you @ajlittoz for reminding me of the relevant Menu point where the character styles applied to the footnote numbers can be found; I realised that at the bottom of the Styles sidebar, I needed to choose “All Styles” rather than “Applied Styles” to see the character styles for footnote numbers, which I could then modify.

@Grantler, the method you describe makes sense to me. However, if I apply it to my file, footnote anchors are found as well even though I have modified their style (no superscript position). I assume the problem is that the file is not formatted properly (several people have been working on it over an extended time, and each did as they saw fit, and the result is a mess). For example, if I count with Altsearch the number of superscripted or subscripted characters (Attributes: Position), I get 1310 hits; mysteriously, all of the “hits” that I have checked are footnotes, but these are not superscripted (see above) … Anyway, since my time is running out I need to leave this unresolved for the current project; chances are that there are not may superscript characters apart from the footnote anchor – I simply wanted to make sure I don’t miss any, but this is far too complicated.

(I also saved the file as FODT and opened it in a text editor to see how the problematic footnote anchors are formatted, but this is even more complicated.)