Multiple references to single footnote

[Charlie]

I have several places in a table where I need to use the same footnote. Adding multiple footnotes just repeats the footnote with different numbers at the bottom of the topic. I tried cross-references. Even tried reading the help...

Ideas?

[doc_guy]

I don't think the footnote capability was designed to accommodate this ability. However, what I'd do is create a special style for the second (and subsequent) footnote entries, and manually insert a span with that class. So the first footnote is actually linked to the footnote, and the subsequent ones are just styled to look like the first one. You'd have to update it if the footnote number changed, but I don't know another way around it.

[Charlie]

Thanks Paul,

I did that, but then realized that only the first footnote would be linked and have the popup note. Do you know of a way to have the footnotes display at the bottom of a topic in generated WebHelp output? If I could do that, I could make the "real" footnote not appear as a link, and they would just go to the bottom of the topic. (fortunately, they're short topics...)

Charlie

[doc_guy]

Sounds like a feature request is in order. No, I don't have an off the cuff ideas on how to make that work for online output, except doing it all manually, which I can see is going to be problematic if you want to do print AND online output.

Make your voice heard here:

https://www.madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx

[Charlie]

Thanks again Paul,

I did make my voice heard... I also found a work-around.

1. Put a line at the bottom of the topic.
2. Below the line put an h6 with an unused numbering scheme (F:{sup}{n+}{sup/}) or however you want to set it up. (Hopefully, I'll never have to use an h6)
3. Go back in your topic to where you want to put the footnote reference and put a cross-reference with a xref style of {sup}{paranumonly}{/sup} to the h6.
4. You can then copy that cross-ref anywhere, and as many times as you like.

The only problem is that the footnote number in the text is a cross-reference, not a popup. I tried making it a popup but it doesn't seem to work.

Charlie

[peckerdunne]

Thanks to Charlie for saving my bacon.
Attempting to have multiple references to a single footnote was a noodlescratcher that I gave up on.
Good solution.

[DavidJGross]

Sometimes it blows my mind when I come here looking for a solution, only to find that it has been a known issue for over a decade and hasn't been fixed yet.

[notabene]

We're still waiting for this, too.

Filed a feature request, but we've been waiting for 15 years. So my company is looking to migrate to a jamstack static site generator that has this feature and is faster, too, and then both problems become moot. (New problems, sure, but not those ones. )