Hi all
As a rule of thumb I write big documents with lots of footnotes. The one I currently write has 500+ pages and about 400 footnotes.
Randomly, even if I click in the text, when I make a search it’s the footnotes that are parsed. I could find no way to make it go back to the text. With the number of notes it may be very long until it parses them all. The only thing that works is to click in the last footnote.
It’s very annoying.
Any clue?
TIA
Regards
Nick
@Holly112, Can you share your LibreOffice version and operating system? To do that, choose menu Help - About LibreOffice and copy from there.
No issue with LibreOffice 6.3.6.2 (x86); OS: Windows 6.1.
It searches in the footnote when the last search you did found a result in a footnote. You have to make another research that will find a result in the text, that will “set” the search engine on the text, not on the footnote.
That’s the best solution I could find.
This suggested semi-solution does not work if the new search item also happens to be in a footnote. This unfortunately is often the case if you have a lot of footnotes like Holly112 or myself.
I have found an easy-to-do workaround for this bug or serious design flaw: at or near the top of the document enter a set of characters that you know are very unlikely to be used in your document(s). (I use “jqxz”.) Hide the text so that it is not visible on screen and will not print:
(menu):Format→Character…→Font Effects tab→Hidden
Searching for this text will go to this hidden text, breaking you out of the footnote flaw if you are stuck in it. Then enter the real search you want.
(This flaw has been the case at least since 2018 and with all subsequent LO updates. I am using LibreOffice v7.3.7.2 x64 for Windows 11.)
Using sample attachment 61058 from tdf#49514, with Find (Crtl+F) if looking for word barin footnote and cursor is in footnote qux in footnote then pressing Enter (effectively, Find Next) will result in a not found. Clicking button Find all will find bar in footnote, as will Find Previous.
If it is not something like that then you should create a bug report, How to Report Bugs in LibreOffice - The Document Foundation Wiki