Can Mac Pages format superscript numbers sequentially?

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Can Mac Pages format superscript numbers sequentially?

I have a very long academic document with lots of references. For now I have used the normal * as a placeholder for where the superscript number should be. I have then attached the reference text as a 'comment' to the asterisk. So now I can see all my dosument with the references in the comment pane.

But how do I change all those asterisks to be incremental superscript numbers? How do I format the document so the comments appear at the bottom of each page, where they relate to the superscript numbers.

Do I need another app to do this?

MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 13.3

Posted on May 13, 2023 02:58 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

VikingOSX

Level 10

122,064 points

May 14, 2023 05:51 AM in response to smashingmickey

Let's say you have a document content like the following:

Each asterisk is a superscript, placeholder text, and has its own unique comment.

The following AppleScript will transform this into:

and the original comments are unaffected. This does not generate corresponding footnotes. The assumption is that the Pages document is already open before running the script. Tested: Pages v13 on macOS 13.3.1 (a).

Copy/Paste the following AppleScript into Apple's Script Editor:

use scripting additions

set place_character to "*"
set theTags to {} as list
set cnt to (1 as integer)

tell application "Pages"
	activate
	tell front document
		set theTags to the tag of every placeholder text whose tag contains place_character
		repeat with i from 1 to count of theTags
			set thisTag to (item i of theTags)
			set (first placeholder text whose tag is thisTag) to (cnt as text)
			set cnt to (cnt + 1) as integer
		end repeat
	end tell
end tell
return

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Can Mac Pages format superscript numbers sequentially?

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