I have reported before that RM9’s endnotes are double spaced, which wastes a lot of paper on printed reports for family reunions. In my opinion, it also looks very unprofessional. But I’m a sample size of one and other RM users may like the endnotes to be double spaced.
I have a workaround, but the workaround requires saving reports as DOCX files and editing them with Microsoft Word before printing. One of the Styles needs to be changed to get rid of the double spacing in the endnotes. There is other word processing software that will process DOCX files, but I have no experience with anything except Microsoft Word. I would suspect that any word processing program that supports DOCX files also supports changing the file’s Styles. There is still no workaround if you print directly from RM or if you save RM’s reports as PDF files.
The workaround is as follows after you have created a DOCX file and after you have opened the DOCX file in Microsoft Word.
Navigate to the list of endnotes and click on one of the endnotes. It’s not sufficient just to navigate to the list of the endnotes. You do actually have to click on one of the endnotes.
Enter Ctrl+Shift+s This will open up the initial pop-up for Microsoft Word’s style tools which is a very small pop-up. I have been unable to do a screen capture of this little pop-up window. When I open my screen capture software, the little pop-up disappears. Another and slightly different way to get into Microsoft Word’s style tools is to click on an almost invisible arrow in the lower right hand corner of the Styles group in Microsoft Word’s ribbon when the main Home tab is selected.
The initial pop-up window for which I cannot get a screen capture is entitled Apply Styles. Click the Modify box. You will be taken to the Modify Style box where you can get some actual work done as far as setting a style for endnotes. If you have highlighted the endnotes properly before entering Ctrl+Shift+s you will be in the dialog to set style options for endnotes.
You will see that the Paragraph => After option is set to 8 points. Change it to 0 points and OK your way out of the Microsoft Word’s dialog. Your endnotes will now be single spaced.
If 0 points of spacing makes the spacing too tight for your taste, you might try 1 point or 2 points instead. You might or might not want the font and point size for the endnote list to be a little different than the font and point size for the rest of the report. I find that Tahoma font and 10 point size works well for the endnote list to save a little space and to set the endnote list off from from the rest of the report.
I owe the RM developers and the RM user community an apology. I have reported previously that the DOCX files produced by RM9 do not support a Style for the endnote list. That is obviously incorrect. I haven’t yet identified all the kinds of items in DOCX files produced by RM9 which have been assigned unique styles. But the DOCX files produced by RM9 definitely have styles defined for the endnote list and for the name index and for the place index. This is a very good thing.
I wonder if it might be a good idea if the Paragraph => After option in the Endnote style in RM’s reports defaulted to a value other than 8, like maybe to 0 or to 2. Or maybe there could be an option within RM itself to set this value rather than needing to set it using word processing software. This is the feature request part of this message.
I’m not following why you can’t do this inside the report settings in RM. I believe Paragraph =>After is the Bottom Margin in the report settings under Appearance, Styles and Fonts, Endnote. It controls the space between footnotes. The Line Spacing would control the space between rows.
I had missed that option. So I tried changing Line Spacing, and it doesn’t work. It has no effect whatsoever on the line spacing between endnotes.
Just below Line Spacing on the same options screen for endnote is a thing called Margins. The default for Margins => Bottom is “8 pt”. That’s the one that needs to be changed. Changing it does work to change double spaced endnotes to single spaced endnotes, and it works just fine for reports printed directly from RM as well as for PDF’s saved from RM.
I did a little testing, and the Line Spacing option for endnotes does affect notes that may be printed along with the endnotes - namely Actual Text (aka Research Notes) and Comments. The Line Spacing option does not have any effect on the the spacing of the endnotes themselves.
RM’s use of the term Margins on the options screen for endnotes seems a little misplaced. I think of Margins as being white space at the top of the page, at the bottom of the page, at the left side of the page, and at the right side of the page. I don’t think of Margins as being the space between the lines.
In Microsoft Word’s user interface for styles, the items which RM calls Margins => Left and Margins => Right for endnotes are called Indentation => Left and Indentation => Right. In Microsoft Word’s user interface for styles, the items which RM calls Margins => Top and Margins => Bottom for endnotes are called Spacing => Before and Spacing => After. It seems to me that Microsoft Word’s labelling for these items is correct and that RM’s labelling for these items is incorrect.
That being said, the needed options to get single spaced endnotes do exist already in RM and I had missed that. You can get single spaced endnotes when printing directly from RM. You can get single spaced endnotes when saving a PDF from RM. You can get single spaced endnotes when making DOCX file from RM without needing to post process the option in the DOCX file using Microsoft Word. It’s just that the needed options are hard to find. In my humble opinion, the needed options are labelled incorrectly. And I still find RM’s double spacing of footnotes to be an unfortunate default.
Everything is fine if I am working as I described above. If I set Margins => Bottom to something like 2 points for endnotes and if I save the report as a DOCX, the line spacing for the endnotes is correct with no further action on my part. I don’t even have to adjust the line spacing in the endnotes using Microsoft Word’s style editor.
But if I print directly from RM or if I save the file as a PDF, then the endnotes are worse than double spaced. It’s more like they are triple spaced or quadruple spaced. None of RM9’s options for formatting endnotes seems to have any effect on this problem.
It was a user error. I found some large values set under Padding. You were not able to see the large values set under Padding in my original screen shot because the entire set of options was too big in the vertical direction to capture it all in a single screen shot without scrolling.
I have now reset all the Padding values to zero and all is well. The spacing of lines in the Endnotes is fine now when printing from RM or when saving to a PDF.
I have no recollection of changing the Padding values in RM, but I must have changed them when I was trying to figure which formatting options in RM corresponded to which formatting options in Microsoft Word’s style sheets. It turns out that RM’s Padding values do work in RM and when saving as a PDF, but they are not translated to a DOCX file. On the other hand, RM’s Margins values are translated to a DOCX file. But they are called indentright and after by Microsoft Word.
