Reference different places to the same footnote

Question

I want to make footnotes both at Sentence 1 and Sentence 2 (which are on the same page) to the same footnote.

For example, Wikipedia's "References" have this effect.

Answer 1

You could do this (tested in article and amsart):

Text with first footnote\footnote{\label{note1}This is the labeled footnote}
and more text with a second footnote\footnote{here}.

In this new paragraph we have a reference to the first
footnote\footnotemark[\ref{note1}].

The result will be

Edit: Further testing reveals, that the above solution fails when footnotes are numbered with anything other regular numbers. This is due to the fact, that the argument to \footnotemark is the value of a counter. Placing

\makeatletter
\newcommand\footnoteref[1]{\protected@xdef\@thefnmark{\ref{#1}}\@footnotemark}
\makeatother

in the preamble will allow us to mend the above example allowing any numbering of the footnotes.

Text with first footnote\footnote{\label{note1}This is the labeled footnote}
and more text with a second footnote\footnote{here}.

In this a paragraph we have a reference to the first footnote\footnoteref{note1}.

Edit 2: This will cause a problem when using hyperref where the link created by the \footnoterefmacro points to the previous footnote and not to the referenced footnote. Using the package cleveref as in this answer seems to be the perfect fit.

Answer 2

Objection, your honor:

Have you ever seen that in a book? Probably not. Because: Two footnotemarks numbered with e.g. an "8" raise the question whether it is a typo. But your readers can not come and ask you, if you really meant to do it this way.

Please, if you'd like to refer to the same text, make a footnote saying (maybe in better English than mine):

¹ Long sentence at: Wallace, Infinite Jest, p. 1234.

² See footnote 1.

What you'd like to do is against an old and sensible tradition. It neither an excuse that a part of Wikipedia does it, nor that it is technically possible.

Answer 3

I'm a bit surprised that noone mentioned KOMA-Script's \footref before. The KOMA-Script manual also has an example where multiple reference to the same footnote could make sense:

Maybe you have to mark each trade name with a footnote which states that it is a registered trade name.

One could think of other similar cases…

\documentclass{scrartcl}
\begin{document}

Company SplishSplash\footnote{This is a registered trade name.
All rights are reserved.\label{refnote}}
produces not only SplishPlump\footref{refnote}
but also SplishPlash\footref{refnote}.

\end{document}

This functionality can be used with the standard classes by using scrextend:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{scrextend}
\begin{document}

Company SplishSplash\footnote{This is a registered trade name.
All rights are reserved.\label{refnote}}
produces not only SplishPlump\footref{refnote}
but also SplishPlash\footref{refnote}.

\end{document}

The documentclass memoir already has its own \footref:

\documentclass{memoir}
\begin{document}

Company SplishSplash\footnote{This is a registered trade name.
All rights are reserved.\label{refnote}}
produces not only SplishPlump\footref{refnote}
but also SplishPlash\footref{refnote}.

\end{document}

And for completeness' sake: the footmisc package also defines \footref:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{footmisc}
\begin{document}

Company SplishSplash\footnote{This is a registered trade name.
All rights are reserved.\label{refnote}}
produces not only SplishPlump\footref{refnote}
but also SplishPlash\footref{refnote}.

\end{document}

Answer 4

I found a rather simple way to do this. Just place a label inside the first footnote, and where you want your second reference you make insert a cross reference to that label in superscript, to make it look like a footnote

    line1 \footnote{text bla bla \label{xx}}
    line2 \textsuperscript{\ref{xx}}

Answer 5

The Wikibook LaTeX provides an answer to this question:

To make multiple references to the same footnote, you can use the following syntax:

Text that has a footnote\footnote{This is the footnote} looks like this.
Later text referring to same footnote\footnotemark[\value{footnote}] uses
the other command.

If you need hyperref support, use instead:

Text that has a footnote\footnote{This is the footnote}
\addtocounter{footnote}{-1}\addtocounter{Hfootnote}{-1} looks like this.
Later text referring to same footnote\footnotemark uses the other command.

Note that these approaches don't work if there are other footnotes between the first reference and any of the other "duplicates".

Answer 6

The package fixfoot make just that, specially designed for footnotes that appears very often, but in a page-by-page basis. This way the reader never need to go back to read a footnote, but never is printed more than once in the same page.

Each repeated footnote must be pre-declared and invoked with their own custom command (e.g. \repnote) in the preamble or the document environment. Note that duplicates of the footnote appear in the first compilation. You need two compile at least twice. Note also that in next pages the footnote could appear again but with a higher count:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[a5paper,paperheight=3.5cm]{geometry}
\usepackage{fixfoot}
\usepackage[colorlinks]{hyperref}
\DeclareFixedFootnote{\repnote}{ This is a repated footnote} 
\begin{document}
Text with first footnote\repnote\ and more text with a 
second normal footnote.\footnote{ This is a single footnote} 
Now again the first footnote.\repnote
\newpage
Again the first note \repnote  and another  footnote\footnote{ 
This is a another footnote}, and finally the fixed footnote\repnote.
\end{document}

If you do not want use \repnote\ to maintain the space between words, you can use the starred version (\DeclareFixedFootnote*) that automatically insert a \xspace (however, the xspace is not loaded automatically with fixfoot (i.e., you will need \usepackage{fixfoot,xspace} in the preamble).

Answer 7

For beamer, the solution using \footnotemark[\ref{<tag>}] did not work for me. I used \textsuperscript instead.

Text with first footnote\footnote{\label{note1}This is the labeled footnote}
and more text with a second footnote\footnote{here}.

In this a paragraph we have a reference to the first
footnote\textsuperscript{\ref{note1}}.

Answer 8

I stumbled across the same question. Also, for me, \footnotemark did not work. Reason being the Hyperref-Declarations in the Template to be used from University. I actually found a similar workaround as posted above, just without the use of additional usepackages.

My footnote (the 6st) was labeled Pereira. Occuring again in a later spot, I also "pretended" to have a footnote by using the following workaround: $^{\ref{pereira}}$. It looks like a footnote, and if it is clicked it jumps to the correct one :)

---

In summary one can use \label{footnotelabel} in the original footnote, and reference a second time via

\hyperref[footnotelabel]{$^{\ref*{footnotelabel}}$}

Answer 9

There is a particular use-case that I find occurring the most often to me: author and their affiliations cross-reference each other as it was mentioned above. For this particular case I use authblk package that works exactly as expected with most of the standard classes of documents:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{authblk}

\begin{document}

\author[1,2]{First Last}
\author[2,3]{Name Surname}
\affil[1]{Institute}
\affil[2]{University}
\affil[3]{Organization}

\end{document}

Answer 10

The solution for OpTeX:

\def\flabel[#1]{\label[#1]\wlabel{\_printfnotemark}}

Text with first footnote\fnote{This is the labeled footnote}\flabel[note1]
and more text with a second footnote\fnote{here}.

In this new paragraph we have a reference to the first
footnote\ref[note1].

\bye

Answer 11

For me the combination of
\footnote{\label{label1}footnote text}
for the first footnote and
\footref{label1}
for the second footnote worked in
\documentclass[]{scrbook}

Answer 12

Digging this up to add a note on affiliations:

While I originally ended up on this page to do exactly what the OP intended, I agree with Keks Dose - referring to a footnote as in your example seems the more sensible option (and it's something I have frequently seen footnotes that say "See above" in books etc.)

Stephen, any decent LaTeX template should provide means of adding affiliations without having to resort to "normal" footnotes. In the LNCS template I'm using quite frequently for papers, this is achieved using the \inst command (for institute):

\author{First Author\inst{1} \and Second Author\inst{1} \and Another Author\inst{2}}

\institute{
Some university
\and
Some company
}

I don't know if there are any packages that do this, but I would think so ...

Answer 13

Simple solution: Define new command \footnoteref in preamble as:

\newcommand{\footnoteref}[1]{\textsuperscript{\ref{#1}}}

Then in your text:

\begin{document}

dummy text with footnote\footnote{Hello world\label{note1}}
then more dummy text with same footnote number\footnoteref{note1}

\end{document}

Answer 14

The package footmisc does the job perfectly for me.

\usepackage{footmisc}
Something\footnote{First footnote\label{ref1}} is something which is something which is something\footref{ref1} which is again, something\footref{ref1}.

Answer 15

I find the following method easier.

For instance\footnotemark I can use the same footnote more than once\footnotemark[\value{footnote}]. \footnotetext{footnote with two references}

Ref: https://de.overleaf.com/learn/latex/footnotes#Footnotes_with_multiple_references

Answer 16

Using a different style of reference to the same footnote later on seems a better solution to me by implying that, in effect, the authors are sending the readers to revisit an old footnote. To do otherwise may be more confusing to the reader, who may not realize that, for example, he(she) has been sent to a different page bottom than where the reader was reading. Plus which, the coding for doing it that way is very simple, i.e., for the original footnote and secondary reference one enters

\footnote{\label{note1}Whatever the text of the footnote is}
 ...
Blah, blah, blah---See footnote \ref{note1}. 

This automatically inserts the footnote reference number, e.g., See footnote 18.

Answer 17

Another way would be:

my note\footnote{\label{foot:MY_LABEL} Text text}}.

And, to use again:

Refer Again\textsuperscript{\ref{foot:MY_LABEL}}

Answer 18

While the accepted answer works well within the main body of text, it does not work when trying to use footnotes in captions of tables and figures.

In captions we have to rely on combinations of \footnotemark and \footnotetext.

A possible solution then is to create a counter after placing the first footnotemark, and then to set it to have the value of the built-in footnotemark-counter:

\begin{table}
\caption[First caption without footnote for use in list of tables]{First caption with footnote\footnotemark}
...
\end{table}

\footnotetext{This is the text for our first footnote}
\newcounter{extrafootnotecounter}
\setcounter{extrafootnotecounter}{\value{footnote}}

Now that we have saved the footnote value for later reference, we can freely add other footnotes\footnotemark
\footnotetext{A completely different footnote}

And then we can use our first footnote again as follows:

\begin{table}
\caption[Second caption without footnote for use in list of tables]{Second caption with the first footnote\footnotemark[\value{extrafootnotecounter}]}
...
\end{table}

Note that this solution is not restricted to use within captions.