Troubleshoot footnotes and endnotes

Microsoft Office Word 2003

  • Click Insert, point to Reference, and then click Footnote.

ShowI deleted the footnote text, but the number still appears in my document.

You must delete the note reference mark that corresponds to the note. You can't remove a note by deleting the note text.

ShowSome of the footnotes or endnotes have disappeared.

If you're viewing the printed document on-screen, you can view notes by resting the pointer on the note reference mark in the document. The note text appears above the mark. If the note text does not appear, click Options on the Tools menu, click the View tab, and then select the ScreenTips check box.

You can also display footnotes or endnotes in a note pane at the bottom of the screen by switching to normal view, and clicking Footnotes on the View menu. If a message appears, click View footnote area or View endnote area, and then click OK. In the note pane, click All Footnotes or All Endnotes.

If you've saved the document as a Web page, Microsoft Word automatically moves the footnotes and endnotes to the end of the Web page. To view notes on a Web page, click the note reference mark to follow a hyperlink to the note text.

If you delete an area of text that contains note reference marks, Word also deletes the corresponding note text. If you accidentally delete a note reference mark, click Undo Button image.

ShowI can't see the note pane at the bottom of the page.

Switch to normal view, and then click Footnotes on the View menu, or double-click the note reference mark.

ShowPart of the footnote got moved to the next page.

Microsoft Word automatically moves the part of the footnote that does not fit in the available space to the next page. The amount of available space depends on the amount of text on the page, the margin settings for the document, and the number and length of the footnotes.

ShowI created a custom note separator, and all I see is simple horizontal line.

When you save the Microsoft Word document as a Web page, custom note separators appear as short horizontal lines in the browser. However, the document retains the custom note separator, and it appears when you view the document in Word and when you print the document.

ShowMy footnotes are getting renumbered in my table.

When you insert new footnotes in a table that already contains footnotes, the numbering for individual footnotes may change. This occurs when you insert a new footnote to the right and above an existing note reference mark in the table.