Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Office 365. 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: Viewing Footnotes.
Word implements a full-featured footnote system that allows you total control over where and how footnotes are printed. If you are viewing your document in Print Layout view, the footnotes appear at the bottom of your document, the same as how they'll print.
If you are viewing your document in Draft view, however, the footnotes are not normally visible. Word opens the footnotes pane at the bottom of the document window whenever you insert a footnote. Most users, when they are through entering the footnote text, close the footnotes window so they will be able to see more of their document at once. If you later want to view the footnotes pane, you can display the References tab of the ribbon and click Show Notes in the Footnotes group. When you click the tool, the footnotes pane is displayed. You can then make changes to footnotes in the window, if you so desire.
To close the footnotes pane, you can either click on the Close button at the top of the footnotes pane, or you can again click the Show Notes tool. You can also double-click on the border between the document window and the footnotes window to close the footnotes pane in Draft view.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (9996) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Office 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Viewing Footnotes.
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2020-01-15 16:34:30
(An tAthair) Seán Ó Coinn
Hovering the cursor over the reference number no longer shows a preview of the footnote within the text in Microsoft Word, as it did in previous versions. Instead you have to hover, press "show notes", once to jump down to the footnote, and a second time to return to the text. Heretofore, the footnote preview showed up as soon as you hovered over the reference number without further ado.
2017-08-22 19:01:32
Siri
Is there a way to keep the footnotes open while also viewing the navigation pane? One seems to close the other while in Draft view.
Thanks!!
2015-08-24 08:36:11
Calvin Wilson
To close the footnotes window in draft view, you can also double-click the border between the document window and the footnotes window.
2015-08-22 10:59:28
Carol Saller
If you find yourself often hiding and showing the notes pane, it's worth assigning a keyboard command to toggle them open and closed.
I use Alt+F to open and close the footnotes, Alt+E to do the same for endnotes.
2015-08-22 05:41:41
Dr. Bartolo
Or in draft view you can double click on any existing footnote to open the footnotes pane.
Accessing footnotes this way has the added advantage of being able to navigate through all footnotes at once, as well as selecting them all (by using Ctrl + A) and then updating all fields in them all at once (such as clause or footnote cross referencing) by pressing F9. Neither of which can be done in page layout view.
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.
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Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Office 365. 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: 
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