Footnotes In Word 2013

Adding Footnotes In Word 2013

Footnotes and endnotes often appear in the same discussion and there is some confusion between the two terms. Let us clear up that confusion. Footnotes and endnotes are used in printed documents to explain, comment on, or provide references for text in a document. Many people use footnotes for detailed comments and endnotes for citation of sources.

Footnotes typically appear at the end of each page, whereas endnotes appear at the end of the document. Footnotes and endnotes consist of two linked parts – the note reference mark and the corresponding note text.

Insert A Footnote Or An Endnote

The numbering of footnotes and endnotes is done automatically by Microsoft Word. You can use a single numbering scheme throughout a document, or you can use different numbering schemes within each section in a document. To insert a footnote or an endnote, place the cursor where you want the marker, then go to the References tab and click Insert Endnote or Insert Footnote (in the Footnotes group).

Word inserts the note reference mark (usually a sequential number) and places the insertion point in the text area of the new footnote or endnote. This is where you can type your explanatory notes. You can format the footnote text like any other text (e.g. make it bold, italic, change the font etc.).

Once you’ve finished typing the endnote or footnote you can place the cursor back in the main body of your document to carry on amending it. To return to the reference mark in the document, double click the footnote or endnote reference mark. In fact, this works the other way around too: double click on the reference mark in the document to jump to the footnote or endnote.

When you add, delete, or move notes that have been automatically numbered, Word renumbers the footnote and endnote reference marks.

When you hover over a reference mark in your document, a tooltip will display that contains the text in the corresponding footnote/endnote.

Word keeps a record of each footnote and endnote you create, and you can see them all by clicking References > Captions > Cross-reference, We can use the list presented here to reuse footnotes and insert them elsewhere. However, cross-references have a limitation – if you insert another footnote above the original one, the footnote number will update but the cross-reference number will not. To do this, you need to update all fields in the document. There are various ways to do this, but the easiest is to open “Print Preview”. This will update all cross-references to the correct numbers.

Note: If your footnotes are numbered incorrectly, your document may contain tracked changes. Accept the tracked changes and then Word will correctly number the footnotes and endnotes.