A comment on a recent blog post asked,
Concerning footnote text, when I am in a resource and move my cursor over a footnote, if it is a previously cited work, then the text shows up as "ibid." Is there any way to list the footnotes, so that I don't have to go through the text to find the author of the citation?
Yes, in fact, there is a way to show all of the footnotes in a list. The Auto-Lookup feature should do the trick.
Sometimes you can just look at the previous footnote to find the source you’re looking for, but many times the previous footnote is a couple of pages earlier, and often you have to trace a trail of ibids before you finally find what it’s pointing to.
If you click a footnote only to see the infamous Ibid., there is an easier way to find the source behind it than looking at the previous footnotes. Simply right click anywhere on the page and select “Auto-Lookup.” The Auto-Lookup report will instantly show you a list of the text from the surrounding pop-ups like footnotes and Bible references.
So next time you run into ibids, look no further than the Auto-Lookup feature.
Works great! ... when it works. The first few references I tried were fine, but when I did this with footnote 17 on page 973 of Erickson's Christian Theology, the text jumped back to the heading "Objections to the Doctrine of Forensic Justification" and the Auto-Lookup didn't contain footnote 17. So, there seem to be some quirks with this function. But for the most part it is *exactly* what I was looking for! I just didn't expect it to be hidden behind "Auto-Lookup." Thank you for this very enlightening post.
Thanks for the comment, Thomas. The auto-lookup uses sections as the boundaries for the lookup. I have noticed that it does jump you to the beginning of the section. But I haven't yet seen it look up the wrong section. If that does happen, you can always click the up and down arrows in the Auto-Lookup window to jump to the preceding or following sections.