Adobe InDesign offers the writer graphic design possibilities that Microsoft Word cannot match, but many writers use Word to compose the text of their documents. Fortunately, one can place Word documents in an InDesign document and then use InDesign’s expanded functionality. Converting a Word document to an InDesign document is straightforward, but there is a hitch, having to do with footnotes (and endnotes). InDesign Tasker resolves the difficulty automatically, saving the writer a tedious, time-consuming chore.
A Word About Word Footnotes
Word footnotes come in two flavors: automatically numbered footnotes and user-designated footnotes. Why is that? Well, many Word documents contain quoted material, which sometimes has its own footnotes. The document author’s footnotes should get consecutive numbers, but footnotes in quoted material should retain the footnote numbers from the quoted material.
Word allows that to happen. Clicking on the References tab in Word brings up a ribbon with a Footnotes section. On the left side of the Footnotes Section, clicking on “Insert Footnote” creates a new footnote with consecutive numbering. That’s one flavor of Word footnotes.

The second flavor allows the writer to specify the footnote designation. In the References tab, Footnotes section, instead of clicking on “Insert Footnote,” click on the small arrow at the lower right-hand corner.

That opens a dialog box, in which the writer can specify whether the new note is a footnote or an endnote. Halfway down that dialog box, under Format, is an entry “Custom mark:” with a text box after it.

There the writer can specify whatever footnote marker the writer wants. (It need not be a number; it can be any symbol, combination of symbols, or even a word.) Clicking on OK then inserts the note so the writer can type its text.
If the user discovers an automatically numbered footnote that should have a custom number, there is a way to fix that. Select the footnote call in the text and begin typing. A dialog box will appear, with an “Options” choice. Click on that. The “Footnote and Endnote” dialog box will appear, and the user can then replace the automatic number with a “Custom mark,” as above.
This second flavor of footnote is special for two reasons: (1) Word will not automatically change the marker, and (2) the marker will not “count” in Word’s automatic footnote sequence. So, for example, if the writer has written five automatic footnotes, they will be numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. If the writer then inserts a quotation that has its own footnote marker (say “27”), the writer will insert a custom-mark footnote “27.” If the writer then adds two more automatic footnotes, the Word footnote sequence will look like this:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 27, 6, 7
That’s great; footnote “27” is exempt from Word altering it unless the writer highlights the footnote marker in the text, clicks on the References tab, clicks on the corner arrow, and changes the custom mark by hand.
Placing the Word document in InDesign
1. Create a new, blank, InDesign document
2. Using the Layout tab, specify the document margins
3. Draw a text box the same size as the designated text area
4. Click on File/Place (or press <Ctrl>-D)
5. At the bottom of the pop-up, click on the box “Show Import Options”
6. Click on OK, and a Windows Explorer window will open
7. Navigate to the desired Word document and click on it
8. The Import Options box will open; check (or uncheck) the parts of the Word document that you do (or don’t) want to import, and click OK.
9. In the InDesign window, a “text-bearing” cursor will appear. Making sure that the cursor is within the text box you drew, press <Shift> and left-click. This will flow the Word document into the InDesign document, automatically creating as many pages as needed to contain the Word document’s contents.
Yes, but what about the footnotes?
When the writer places the Word document in InDesign, InDesign automatically numbers all the footnotes (automatically-numbered and custom-marked) sequentially. That’s the bad news. So our previous footnote sequence (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 27, 6, 7) will now look something like this: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 27, 7, 8. What is the reader supposed to make of that?
The good news is that InDesign has retained the custom-marked footnote designations; they appear after InDesign’s automatic number. And that’s where ID Tasker comes in. Without ID Tasker, the user would have to go through the entire document, manually changing every footnote number, beginning with the first custom-mark footnote. It is possible, of course, but it is not efficient.
By running three tasks in ID Tasker, all that renumbering will occur automatically. Instead of taking hours (or days), it will take just a few minutes, depending on the document length.
ID-Tasker’s Magic
Here is ID-Tasker with 3x pre-loaded Tasks:

At the beginning, all FN calls (which are in the text) and FN markers (which are the numbers preceding the body of the FN) have ID’s automatic numbers assigned to them.
First task – LoadReferences_Convert – notes which FNs have Word-automatic numbers and which have Word-custom numbers, and hides FN markers in the FN’s themselves. Task 1 then inserts custom numbers for the Word-custom numbers in the text to show as footnote calls.
After executing it, text in InDesign will look like this:

Highlighted in Yellow – InDesign’s automatic markers – they are visible here, but should be hidden – PointSize=0.1, Horizontal Scale=1%, Color=[None], etc. – we are just using InDesign’s built-in mechanism to take care of the “location” of the Footnotes.
Highlighted in Red – our Custom Markers – ignored by ID-Tasker.
Highlighted in Blue – “#” symbol – our Automatic Markers – will be re-numbered by the next Task.
Of course those colors are just temporary and for the purpose of this tutorial – you have full control over the formatting – thanks to dedicated CharStyles – in this case named as “Ftn Auto” & “Ftn Custom” – but you can of course define your own styles.
Second Task – ReNumberAuto – renumbers the former Word-automatic notes sequentially, skipping the Word-custom footnotes. At this point, all the footnotes—automatic and custom—have the correct numbers.
Click here if you would like to know more about how 2nd Task works.

Clear Text List – removes all previously loaded / found texts – if there were any – just in case
Load Text Search – loads all texts with “Ftn Auto” CharStyle applied
Filter Texts – hides all search results that are in the Footnote – leaves only results from the main text
Sort Texts – sorts list by “Char Index” column – to make sure that order of the elements on the list – Footnotes – is correct
ReNumber Auto Footnotes – renumbers Auto Footnote Markers in the main text
Filter Texts – shows previously hidden items on the list – so we don’t have to reload everything again
Filter Texts – hides all search results that are in the Story – leaves only results from the Footnotes
Sort Texts – sorts list by “Page Index” & “Pos Y” columns – so we can get correct order of the Footnotes’ bodies
ReNumber Auto Footnotes – this time renumbers Auto Footnote Markers in the Footnotes
After executing it, text in InDesign will look like this:

As you can see – our Red markers – are unchanged – but our Blue markers – “#” – are now re-numbered.
Third Task – Browse – helps to quickly navigate through the document and switch between Footnotes, without the need to scroll through pages.
In case you need to insert a new Footnote – you just need to copy any pair of the existing markers – yellow+red or yellow+blue – and then run second Task if it’s an automatic Footnote that needs to be re-numbered.
This way, you don’t need to have ID-Tasker run in the background – or you can give this file to someone else / return to the author to make some changes.
You then need to run second task when you get the file back.
The whole process is 100% automated – user doesn’t have to do anything beside importing WORD document and running First and Second Tasks:
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