Making Endnotes Part of the Footnotes

Rhonda received a document that includes both footnotes and endnotes. She needs to change the document so that it includes only footnotes. The endnotes should not be deleted, but simply become part of the footnotes. She wonders if there is a way to do this easily in the document.

The short answer is yes, there is an easy way. Follow these steps:

1. Display the References tab of the ribbon.
2. Click the small icon at the bottom-right of the Footnotes group. Word displays the Footnote and Endnote dialog box. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Footnote and Endnote dialog box.

3. Click the Convert button. Word displays the Convert Notes dialog box. (See Figure 2.)



Figure 2. The Convert Notes dialog box.

4. Make sure the Convert All Endnotes to Footnotes radio button is selected.
5. Click OK to close the Convert Notes dialog box. (This is when the actual conversion occurs.)
6. Click Cancel to close the Footnote and Endnote dialog box.

In the process of converting all your endnotes, Word renumbers all the footnotes properly to reflect the newly modified endnotes. As you can deduce from step 4, these steps assume that you want to change all your endnotes to footnotes. If you want to change only some of the endnotes to footnotes, then check out this WordTip:

https://tips.net/T11199

If you have Track Changes turned on in your document, understand that you may get some funky results on the conversion. Word renumbers everything, but it may appear that the numbering in the footnotes is messed up. It isn't, but you won't see the correct numbering until you resolve the changes that were tracked when you did the conversion.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (5909) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, 2024, and Word in Microsoft 365.