Footnote Placement Not Across Two Pages

[MattC]

I have a document that requires a footnote in a particular place. The footnote is near the end of the paragraph, which is near - but not too close - to the end of the page. The paragraph that the footnote indicator is in flows over to the next page, dispite there being enough room on the page to, at least, start the footnote, leaving a large white space at the bottom. (It should then flow over to the next page - which normally it does.)

I will try to upload screenshot of what I mean. (Due to the sensitive nature of the document, I am unable to screenshot the actual version, but the test one does the same thing.) (Also, please bear with me, as I am not too familier with this forum and I might screw up the upload.)

Untitled 2.odt (8.5 KB)

(That seemed to work. Although not too clear. Should have done it in bigger text.)

Note: the footnote mark is at the top of the second page at the end of the third full sentence, and the white spce at the foot of page one.

Removing more of the sentences pulls the footnote across to the foot of page one even if the footnote is too long to fit completely onto the bottom of the page - but, obviously, this is not possible with the real text. I’ve tried adjusting various settings, but to no avail.

Am I doing something wrong?

Matt

P.S. using LO v7.4.6.2 on Win10

[ajlittoz]

This is consequence of text flow management in your paragraph and also of interaction between text and footnote sizes.

Writer tries to keep footnote anchor (the number in your text) and footnote text on the same page.

When Writer reaches the footnote anchor, it hass to make a decision about the location of the footnote. Here there is already no footnote, so everything is open. Footnote size is known (but it does not really matter as it can spill over onto next page). Writer sees whether the bottom space can hold the spacing between text and notes, the separator, spacing between separator and note, and at least one note line.

The answer is yes, but stuffing as much of the note as possible causes a page break to occur, leaving only one line of the paragraph text on next page. Here the text flow properties of the current paragraph style are taken into account. You are using Default Paragraph Style (which is faulty, but that’s another story) and its configuration for widow and orphan is two lines.

Since standard action would leave only one line at top, the preceding line is borrowed to be transferred at top of new page. Since this line holds the note, the note is also moved to next page, leaving this ugly blank space.

Your immediate (and dirty) fix is to remove the widow control in Format>Paragraph, Text Flow tab.

A more elegant and permanent fix is to learn styling (see documentation, Writer Guide and excellent Bruce Byfield’s Designing with style) and define a consistent set of styles and at least use built-in styles. Default Paragraph Style should never be used for real text because this is where you configure for preferences which will be forwarded to all other styles.

[MattC]

Thanks ajlittoz. Much appreciated. I’ve done the ‘dirty’ fix at the moment, but I will definitely look into those documents you linked to.

Matt

P.S. how do I mark this as ‘solved’, again?

[ajlittoz]

@MattC

how do I mark this as ‘solved’, again?

@PKG has taken care of it on your behalf. The provedure is to tick the Solution box below the answer.

Please, don’t use an Answer for (always appreciated) feedback because it may confuse other users: answer number is shown on the home page and it may suggest there are 2 different solutions to your problem. Feedback and other requests for clarification, addition, … should go into comments.