[Tex/LaTex] Change footnote “numbering” temporarily

Question

I would like to change my footnote "numbering" style temporally to letters (a,b,c …) the default numbering beeing numbers (1,2,3 …).

This is needed only for specific paragraph, so I can't use the

\renewcommand{\thefootnote}{\alph{footnote}}

at the beginning of the document.

Answer 1

\newenvironment{alphafootnotes}
  {\par\edef\savedfootnotenumber{\number\value{footnote}}
   \renewcommand{\thefootnote}{\alph{footnote}}
   \setcounter{footnote}{0}}
  {\par\setcounter{footnote}{\savedfootnotenumber}}

\begin{document}
a\footnote{a} b\footnote{b}

\begin{alphafootnotes}
c\footnote{c} d\footnote{d}
\end{alphafootnotes}

e\footnote{e}
\end{document}

You'll get footnotes numbered 1, 2, a, b, 3.

You might also consider the packages manyfoot and bigfoot that provide multiple footnote schemes.