Is there a way to delete all footnotes and associated text within an epub file?

[OccultDemonVHS]

Hello,

So, I typically like to load my Epub files into a text-to-speech reader on my phone - which is great, but sometimes the books I listen to have a plethora of foot notes and it's incredibly annoying to have TTS read each footnote number and the entire footnotes section at the end of the chapter.

I would really like to figure out if there's a way to just delete all footnotes, their associated text and hyperlink numbers in one or two clicks rather than manually editing and deleting 500+ entries throughout a book. This way I could just make an edited copy of the book for my text-to-speech app and have the regular copy for when I want to go back and check out the footnotes. Please see the attached image that shows what the file looks like.

Would anyone be able to help me understand/figure out how to do this? And if this is not the correct forum please direct me to the best place for a question like this as I'm rather new to this program and forum.

Thank you in advance

[KevinH]

Please follow our posting guidelines and edit and attach your large image instead of including it inline.

And yes, you can use Sigil's regular expression find and replace capabilities to first remove the footnotes and via a second pass to remove the links to those footnotes assuming the ids beginning with "fn-" and footnotes all have class of "footnote".

If you have never written or used regular expression find and replace, you should probably read up on it first. Then people here can help refine your approach into something workable.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by OccultDemonVHS

Hello,

So, I typically like to load my Epub files into a text-to-speech reader on my phone - which is great, but sometimes the books I listen to have a plethora of foot notes and it's incredibly annoying to have TTS read each footnote number and the entire footnotes section at the end of the chapter.

I would really like to figure out if there's a way to just delete all footnotes, their associated text and hyperlink numbers in one or two clicks rather than manually editing and deleting 500+ entries throughout a book. This way I could just make an edited copy of the book for my text-to-speech app and have the regular copy for when I want to go back and check out the footnotes. Please see the attached image that shows what the file looks like.

Would anyone be able to help me understand/figure out how to do this? And if this is not the correct forum please direct me to the best place for a question like this as I'm rather new to this program and forum.

Thank you in advance

Congratulations on creating a message that is rather difficult to read and includes an image that exceeds the posting guidelines on image size. Please use the attach paperclip above the message input box or the Manage attachments button below the box so we only have to see a small image which can be enlarged if needed.

That being said, you might want to check into using regex to remove the links and the footnotes though you don't show a sample of the call to the footnote.

For the footnotes you show, something like find: <p class="footnote">< href=#fn(.*?)</p> and a blank replace could remove the actual footnote.

[OccultDemonVHS]

I appreciate both of you for the helpful advice (even if it was in a rather unwelcoming way.) I just ended up defaulting to using RegEx find/replace commands in Notepad++ instead.

I would edit the post to correct the image issue, but I can't seem to find where they've hidden the "edit post" button on this forum.

Check out Posting Guideline #12. It's a doozy.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by OccultDemonVHS

I appreciate both of you for the helpful advice (even if it was in a rather unwelcoming way.) I just ended up defaulting to using RegEx find/replace commands in Notepad++ instead.

I would edit the post to correct the image issue, but I can't seem to find where they've hidden the "edit post" button on this forum.

Check out Posting Guideline #12. It's a doozy.

Your post count is too low (anti-spam measure) to self edit. A Mod can do it for you upon request.

Footnotes are usually LINKED. So you might use Tools:Reports:Links (on sidebar) to locate them