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: Inserting and Deleting Footnotes.

Inserting and Deleting Footnotes

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated August 21, 2021)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021


Footnotes are used to provide printed annotations or references for a document. If you want to insert a footnote in your document, follow these steps:

  1. Position the insertion point where you want the footnote mark to be located.
  2. Display the References tab of the ribbon.
  3. Click the Insert Footnote tool, in the Footnotes group. A footnote mark appears in your document. If you are in Print Layout view, the insertion point moves to the bottom of the page on which the footnote appears. If you are in Draft view, the Footnotes window is displayed at the bottom of the document window.
  4. Enter your footnote, formatting it as you would any other text in your document.
  5. If the Footnotes window is visible, close the window by double-clicking the line that divides the window from the main portion of your document.

If you previously inserted footnotes into your document and you want to later delete one of them, follow these steps:

  1. Highlight the footnote reference mark in your document.
  2. Press either Del or Ctrl+X.

The footnote is deleted and, if you are using auto-numbered footnotes, the remaining footnotes in your document are renumbered.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (9082) 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: Inserting and Deleting Footnotes.

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

Changing the Height of a Font

Scaling the width of a font is easy to do with Word's formatting capabilities. Scaling the height of the fonts is not so ...

Discover More

Creating a JPG File from a Chart

Excel provides some great tools that allow you to create amazing charts based on data in your worksheets. Once your ...

Discover More

Splitting Cells to Individual Columns

When you are working with data created by other systems or other people, you often need to convert the data into ...

Discover More

Learning Made Easy! Quickly teach yourself how to format, publish, and share your content using Word 2021 or Microsoft 365. With Step by Step, you set the pace, building and practicing the skills you need, just when you need them! Check out Microsoft Word Step by Step today!

More WordTips (ribbon)

Brackets around Footnote References

When you insert footnotes in a document, Word allows you to modify the formatting applied to the footnote references. ...

Discover More

Combining Footnotes

For some scholarly papers, you may have a need to concatenate all the footnotes in a paragraph into a single footnote at ...

Discover More

Moving Footnote Text into the Document

Need to move the contents of a footnote up into the main body of your document? You can use normal editing techniques to ...

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 three more than 1?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)


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.