Correctly Numbering Footnotes in a Chapter

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated April 11, 2022)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365


3

John has written a book with many chapters. Each chapter is a section within the document. There are a lot of footnotes, numbered from 1 in each section. There are some landscape-oriented illustrations in some chapters, and so each of these is its own one-page section. The problem is that footnotes start at 1 again after each landscape page, even though that page is in the middle of a chapter. John would like the numbering before and after the landscape illustration to be continuous for the whole chapter but, so far, he can't find a way of doing it.

Word allows you to modify how your footnotes are numbered, and this modification can be made for each section within your document. It sounds like, in John's case, the footnotes have been modified so that they begin with 1 every time there is a section break, so the problem occurs only with those chapters that contain multiple sections (such as for the chapters containing sections for landscape-oriented pictures).

To get around this problem, follow these steps:

  1. Place the insertion point within the first section that contains a landscape-oriented picture.
  2. Display the References tab of the ribbon.
  3. Click the small icon at the lower-right corner of the Footnotes group of the ribbon. Word displays the Footnote and Endnote dialog box.
  4. Make sure the Footnotes radio button is selected at the upper-left corner of the dialog box. (See Figure 1.)
  5. Figure 1. The Footnote and Endnote dialog box.

  6. Using the Numbering drop-down list, choose Continuous.
  7. Using the Apply Changes To drop-down list, choose This Section.
  8. Click Apply.
  9. Click Cancel to dismiss the dialog box.
  10. Place the insertion point within the section immediately following the section that contains a landscape-oriented picture.
  11. Repeat steps 2 through 8.

The idea is to change the way footnotes are numbered, to Continuous, for every section in the document except for those sections that actually start chapters. Those sections (and only those sections) should have their numbering (step 5) set to Restart Each Section.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (7798) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365.

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. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Using Copy and Paste for Formatting

Want to copy formatting from one cell and paste it into another cell? It's easy to do if you use the Paste Special ...

Discover More

Getting Rid of a Spiked Square

Sometimes you may see characters in a document that you cannot get rid of and you aren't sure what they are. That's the ...

Discover More

Setting a Default Table Border Width

When you insert a table into your document, it uses a standard-weight line around each cell in the table. If you want to ...

Discover More

Create Custom Apps with VBA! Discover how to extend the capabilities of Office 2013 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Access) with VBA programming, using it for writing macros, automating Office applications, and creating custom applications. Check out Mastering VBA for Office 2013 today!

More WordTips (ribbon)

Including Footnotes and Endnotes in Word Counts

When you have Word calculate how many words there are in a document, it normally doesn't pay attention to text in ...

Discover More

Jumping to a Footnote

Jumping to a specific footnote can be very handy if your document has a lot of footnotes in it. Word provides the ...

Discover More

Footnote Numbers Missing on Printout

When you add footnotes to a document, you expect the footnote reference numbers to be visible when you print the ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is 4 + 8?

2021-05-28 05:08:23

Dorathea Du Plessis

Brilliant! Thank you.


2021-05-27 13:59:36

Dorathea Du Plessis

I'm working on a document of almost 600 pages and lots of footnotes. In some chapters there are section breaks for landscape tables.
Now, I have a problem with setting footnotes for each Chapter to start from 1, thus Restart each Section.
But now you have a section break within the chapter and wants to continue with the footnote numbers. For example: the last footnote was 8 before the landscape table. The next page after the table should be footnote 9, but it starts again at 1. It i s not possible to change the "start at" number to 9.

I've been struggling with this for a long time and this doctoral student wants it done the right way, thus continuing with his footnote numbers.

Please help!


2019-01-23 06:08:59

Sayed

I have a document that has separate chapters and I want to restart the footnotes for each chapter. However, sometimes I also need to include section breaks within chapters and I don't want to restart footnotes after these section breaks.

For example, I might have 2 chapters:

In chapter 1 I have 59 footnotes. Then I have a section break. Then I start chapter 2 which has a section break in the middle. There is 10 footnotes before the section break in chapter 2 and 10 footnotes after.

If I restart the footnotes after the first section break and then continue the footnotes after the second section break my footnotes are numbered like so: 1-59, 1-10, 71.

What I want is my footnotes to be numbered: 1-59, 1-10, 11 etc.

In other words, when I continue the footnotes, I want them to continue from the previous section but not from the start of the whole document.

Is there any way to do this? I am open to using VBA.

Thanks


This Site

Got a version of Word that uses the ribbon interface (Word 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Word, visit our WordTips site focusing on the menu interface.

Videos
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.