Change the footnote or endnote separator (video)

Sorry about that, Regina. I should have mentioned that this is pretty much the same in Word 2007 and Word 2010. Hope you found what you needed!

And I miss Mr. Rogers, too. Next video I'll wear a sweater :-)

Anne, here's a quick text version that works in Word 2007 or 2010:

1. Switch to Draft view.

2. Double click the footnote or endnote reference mark (usually, that would be the little superscript number in your text).  

3. In the note pane, click the dropdown next to Footnotes and choose the type of separator you want to change or remove in the Footnotes or Endnotes box:

• To change the separator that appears between the document text and notes, click Footnote Separator or Endnote Separator.
• To change the separator for notes that continue from the previous page, click Footnote Continuation Separator or Endnote Continuation Separator.

4. Select the separator and make changes:

• To remove the separator, press DELETE.
• To edit the separator, insert a Clip Art divider line or type text.
• To restore the default separator, click Reset

Hope that's helpful.

@LDMURS,

Word will automatically provide as much space as it can for your footnotes. The catch is that it will do so while necessarily keeping the footnote on the same page as the reference mark. To see a demonstration of a "maximized" footnote, try adding a really long footnote to the first line of text in a document. The rest of that first page will be filled with your super-long footnote.

But here are a few things you might try to help prevent your footnotes from breaking across pages:

• Convert your footnotes to appear at the end of the document as endnotes – Word can do this for you
• Shorten the footnote (but I’m sure you’ve thought of that one)
• Reduce the font size of your footnotes
• Insert a manual page break in your body text just before the reference mark

Does that help at all?

Warren, here's another way to show the Notes pane (Word 2007 or 2010):

1. Click on the References tab
2. In the Footnotes group, click Show Notes

As for the extra spacing you'd like to get rid of, first thing I’d look at is that footnote and make sure it doesn't have a carriage return manually inserted before the reference mark. If that doesn't fix it, try this:

1. In the Notes pane, right-click on your first footnote
2. Choose Paragraph
3. On the Indents and Spacing tab, under Spacing, make sure that Before is set to 0

And if that doesn’t fix it, try this:

1. In the notes pane, click the dropdown and choose Footnote Separator
2. Then make sure there’s no space after/below the Separator line … or just click Reset

Hope that helps!

Glad to hear it was helpful, Fiona.

@b8akaratn: Glad it was helpful!

@ Dannette: Try opening the Footnotes Dialog box (on References tab, the little box in the Footnotes group) and set the Location of Endnotes to End of document.

I’m wondering if you may have started out with one Master Document containing all your chapters with section breaks dividing each chapter, and the location for your endnotes was set to End of section. If that's the case, then what may have happened is that when you divided the Master Document into your Individual Chapter documents, those settings were inherited.

Hope that helps!

P.S. Sorry for the delayed reply!