Menu>Insert>Footnote or Endnote>Footnote is grayed out when the cursor is inside my table, but not when the cursor is in the rest of my text.
I can’t copy-paste a footnote to a table either.
Why is that, and is there a way to put footnotes in tables?
Cannot reproduce with 6.0.0.1 on Win. What is your version?
Version: 5.4.2.2
Build ID: 22b09f6418e8c2d508a9eaf86b2399209b0990f4
CPU threads: 8; OS: Mac OS X 10.13.2; UI render: default;
Locale: en-US (en_US.UTF-8); Calc: group
As you just found, it’s not possible to insert footnotes or endnotes inside tables: tables are “objects” and that makes their content somewhat “disconnected” from the rest of the document.
But there is a workaround: insert the “real” footnote just below the table and then cross-reference it from any cell. You’ll need to “hide” the real footnote marker by applying a white font colour, for example.
EDIT: That’s what happens when you don’t have enough sleep, I suppose. Maybe I got confused with footnotes on captioned figures. The only way it doen’t work on tables is to have the table inside a frame. In fact, being “floating objects” frames do not allow footnotes. But if you have a normal table on a normal page, it should work.
Sorry for the previous “answer”.
Thanks! I can see how that works as a workaround of last resort but I think if I needed a footnote that badly I’d rather just use Microsoft Word, or a typewriter, or a goose feather!
Ooooh! You’re right. I can put footnotes in a new table, but not in the table I already had. Conclusion: my table must be in a frame, as you say. Next question, then: what is a frame and how can I get my table out of it?
Create a new table with the proper number of rows and columns. Now put the cursor on any cell of the problematic table and press Ctrl-A (not sure about mac equivalence to that shortcut) twice to select the table contents. Finally, copy, put the cursor on the first cell in the new table and paste.
Frames (Insert → Frame → Frame) are like floating “mini pages” that accept almost any kind of content. Because they are floating and their position is not fixed, they do not allow footnotes.
Well: I suppose that you don’t need the new table creation step. Simply selecting the table (putting cursor into it, and using Table-Select-Table menu to be sure), copying it (Ctrl+C), and pasting to a normal paragraph should do it.
Thanks Mike and RGB-es! That fixed it.
For future reference: do you have an idea how I might have put my table in a frame in the first place (it certainly wasn’t on purpose), and are those frames visible or recognizable somehow? Next time I end up with one, how will I know?
Well, one way could be if it came from Word, which makes it extremely easy to make any table floating by dragging it. Those floating tables are imported as tables in frames.
To recognize, (apart from the already known limitation) you may try to click on table’s border, and see that resulting selected object has square handles on it, which are handles of the frame. Context menu will also provide entries for frame properties for that selection.