Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Changing the Way Footnotes Are Numbered.

Changing the Way Footnotes Are Numbered

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated October 2, 2021)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021

In Word, footnotes can be automatically numbered from 1 through the number of footnotes in the document. Thus, if your document contains 14 footnotes, they will be numbered 1 through 14. You can change the way footnotes are numbered, however. Word allows you to specify both a starting footnote number and whether the numbering starts over with each new section in your document.

Word allows you to change how it handles footnote numbering by following these steps:

Make sure the References tab is selected on the ribbon.
Click the small downward-pointing arrow at the lower-right corner of the Footnotes group. Word displays the Footnote and Endnote dialog box. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Footnote and Endnote dialog box.

Make sure the Footnotes radio button is selected.
Change the Start At value to reflect where you want Word to start numbering.
Change the Numbering drop-down list to reflect how you want Word to count your footnotes.
Click on Apply and then Cancel; otherwise click Insert to add a footnote mark at the current document location.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (5973) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Changing the Way Footnotes Are Numbered.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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What is 1 + 0?

2023-10-01 08:09:38

Adam

Do you know how to do it in Word Online? It seems there is no any little arrowin Footnote group.

2023-02-26 14:21:55

Attila

"Click the small downward-pointing arrow at the lower-right corner of the Footnotes group."
I can't see any "Footnote group" in Word, Office 365 for Mac when the "References" tab is selected.
Hence, i can't find "the small downward-pointing arrow at the lower-right corner of the Footnotes group".

Any suggestion to solve this problem, please?

2023-02-14 17:08:30

Michael Cooper

This info is apparently not applicable to Mac. This should've been specified at the head of the article so as not to waste Mac users' time.

2022-04-10 18:58:58

Ahmed Atia

many thanks for the information
was really helpful

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