The ability to unlink endnote references and the endnotes is ESSENTIAL. There are many cases in which this is imperative. In a large publication endnotes may start over each chapter or section. All the publication's end notes may need to be placed at the end of the publication organized by chapter/section. A publication may be set up as a Book and be comprised of many documents each with their own endnote order...on and on and on. This DEFINITELY should be a feature that can be optional.

I have a problem with the new end note system in indesign 2018

I have a document were I would like to have the images on Layer 1.
The english text for the book on layer 2, and the danish text on layer 3. -
When I place the danish text on layer 3 the danish end notes is added to the english end notes on layer 2 - creating total chaos in my document. I really don know what to do?

Again, please don’t throw the baby away... Dynamic endnotes in InDesign are long overdue. But they need an “off” button. Many of the books I design I then export in .idml format and send to layout contractors who still work in CS6, which they own, and they don’t subscribe to Creative Cloud. With InDesign 2018, however, exporting or saving back to .idml (or any ealier version) immediately strips all endnotes out of the file, including all in-text reference numbers. Any book with endnotes that I am designing for my contrators must be done in InDesign 2017. It is all well and good that both 2017 and 2018 can be available together, but it gets very confusing, and enormously frustrating. Surly it cannot be that difficult to have an option for either dynamic or static endnotes...? (By the latter I mean endnotes as they are in all earlier versions of InDesin than 2018.)

Just upgraded to CC 2018 and was shocked that endnotes are now not working as before. Please fix this dynamic endnote problem pronto!

(Assuming like many) I need the ability to turn off the automatic endnote function that appears in InDesign CC 2018. It may be practical for some applications, but it greatly impedes the flexibility of designs.

Please have an option to disable dynamic endnotes. This new feature is creating all sorts of havoc for me as a magazine designer

Please have an option to disable dynamic endnotes. This new feature is creating all sorts of havoc for me as a book designer.

As a book-only designer of 30+ years standing (yes, since PageMaker 1...) I have to say that for most long books with sometimes many, many hundreds of Endnotes the new system works fine, if you understand it. I can see that it is certainly impossible when doing individual articles in a magazine or journal and I have such an impossible situation at present with many letters that have editor's Endnotes (not Footnotes) that must remain at the end of each letter, all letters being in one Word file to start with – and that does require beginning in CC2017. But all this really needs from Adobe is a simple button to click to turn the new Endnotes function off. And I do NOT mean the one that already exists in the ''Place'' dialogue box, which simply eliminates all Endnotes from the placed file.

As AMC mentioned, building a document in CC2017, then opening in CC2018 is an easy enough workaround.
I noticed no one had mentioned that CC2018 does not recognize section breaks when stringing multiple chapters together in one document. I.e., the chapters notes are all continuously numbered. So, its really a two-pronged problem for me. Fortunately both issues are resolved by starting a galley in CC2017.

Dynamic endnotes have been one of the most-requested features for InDesign ever. People want them work like Footnotes do when importing from Word.

This "1.0" implementation leaves a lot to be desired ... especially the ability to import them as static ... but in the meantime, why not just place/import into CC 2017, then open that INDD in CC2018? The CC app lets you install and use both..

In case this helps anybody: At present, I can only help myself by making sure that the Word document has footnotes (not endnotes), and and after placing it in Indesign use Peter Kahrel's foot_to_end_dynamic.jsx script; then I have to change bullets to text, and then delete cross references. At this point I’m where I was in InDesign CC 2017, when I simply placed a Word document with endnotes in InDesign. I hope somebody at Adobe comes up with a fix soon.

While a fan of the endnotes "feature" my clients almost all want print and HTML exports, and MOST endnotes have URLs in them. When exporting to HTML, hyperlinks break the endnotes. Please, please fix this bug. If you could enhance the "feature" to allow the compositor to select where the endnotes were place (end of story, new story, new document), that would be great, too.

While I like the idea of dynamic endnotes, this "improvement" has totally messed up our workflow. We put out several magazines and newsletters, all with endnotes at the end of articles. I assumed "load cursor" meant that the endnote would load into the cursor and force me to put it in a separate text box WHERE I WANTED IT when placing the word doc. because to me, that would make sense. please fix this :)

I'd also like to cast my vote for the option to import Endnotes as static. In our publication, the endnotes for a particular story have always appeared at the end of that story.

I agree we need to be able to import Endnotes as static, at least until Adobe fixes the way they currently do not work. This is way worse than the way it was before they "improved" it. It is extremely rare that we would keep the endnotes threaded to the text frame. It just is not versatile enough as is. These features seem to be designed by people who have no understanding of how people actually work on documents in the real world.

The newest Quark XPress update addresses this issue excellently! Maybe it's time to leave Indesign for Quark. Here's what Quark has done:
Word Import enhanced — The Word import filter now supports explicit options to include/exclude Footnotes, Hyperlinks and Pictures. You can also import Footnotes as static text at the end of the story flow and import Word tables as native QuarkXPress tables.

Absolutely agree with the OP - this new "feature" in ID 2018 has totally ******* up my workflow. I have been using InDesign to produce an academic magazine for 12 years and was perfectly happy with the previous endnote feature - all articles in the magazine heavily feature endnotes . My preferred solutions to this totally unnecessary problems are (i) option to work like it used to (ii) option to flow endnotes at the end of the story, not on a separate story page. I would like to know if anyone actually requested this new feature?

I would like to chime in on the plea for an option to disable the new endnotes "feature." Designers should not have to reinstall old software, run scripts, or watch tutorials to learn how to workaround a major software change that was sprung on us like a virus attack. If some designers asked for this endnote feature, announce it as an add-on, and let them watch tutorials. Allow the rest of us to check a box that says: "No, thank you," and get on with our work day.

I can only add to the frustration expressed here about this new endnote feature in InDesign. I design academic magazines and books, and we put endnotes at the end of each article (magazine) or chapter (books). In the case of books, there may also be photographs throughout the text. This involves a 'flow' through all the pages from start to end. This endnote feature and creation of a separate box... it is bewildering!! It is part of a trend I'm experiencing of perfectly sensible software design making changes for the worse. Nobody could have tested the UX on a design-for-print designer who uses endnotes. Like others, I'm using InDesign 2017. How long with that remain an option? This issue cost me most of yesterday afternoon working on a book that is needed urgently to go for indexing.

My publishing clients create separate endnote files and ask me to remove any footnotes from the chapter files when I import them. This new "feature" removed all the endnote references in one book before I realized what was going on. To avoid such problems, I now import my text in CC17 before working in CC18.

PLEASE provide an option to turn off this feature. It may work fine for short reports and papers but is a disaster for books.

What a mess. Adding hours to my workday trying to find a workaround for this. I do newsletters, and need the endnotes at the end of each story. NOT THE VERY END. Some have 100+ footnotes, I'm seriously suppose to renumber manually???