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: Searching for Footnote and Endnote Marks.

Searching for Footnote and Endnote Marks

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated June 7, 2022)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021

If you don't know where a footnote or endnote reference is located in your document, you can use Word's powerful searching capabilities to find automatic footnote references. To search for a footnote or endnote, follow these steps if you are using Word 2007:

Press Ctrl+F to display the Find tab of the Find and Replace dialog box. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Find tab of the Find and Replace dialog box.

In the Find What box, enter the text for which you want to search. To search for a footnote mark, enter ^f. To search for an endnote mark, instead enter ^e.
Set other searching parameters, as desired.
Click on Find Next.

If you are using Word 2010 or a later version of Word, then the Find and Replace dialog box is not displayed when you press Ctrl+F. Instead, Word displays the Navigation pane to the left of your document when you press Ctrl+F. You can still use ^f or ^e in the box at the top of the pane, and Word displays all instances of the footnote and endnote marks in your document.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (11162) 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: Searching for Footnote and Endnote Marks.

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...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Removing a Macro from a Shortcut Key

When you assign a macro to a shortcut key, you make it easy to run the macro without ever removing your hands from the ...

Discover More

Using Alternating Styles

Alternating styles can come in handy when you have to switch between one type of paragraph and another, automatically, as ...

Discover More

An Automatic File Name

Do you have a set "standard" for how you name new documents? If so, you may be interested in implementing the technique ...

Discover More

Do More in Less Time! An easy-to-understand guide to the more advanced features available in the Microsoft 365 version of Word. Enhance the quality of your documents and boost productivity in any field with this in-depth resource. Complete your Word-related tasks more efficiently as you unlock lesser-known tools and learn to quickly access the features you need. Check out Microsoft 365 Word For Professionals For Dummies today!

More WordTips (ribbon)

Finding Missing Spaces before Numbers

If you want to insert a space between letters and digits in your document, you have a couple of tasks to perform. First, ...

Discover More

Searching for Optional Hyphens

If you have a document that contains optional hyphens (special characters that mark where a word can be split between ...

Discover More

Replacing without Automatically Finding

When you use Word's Find and Replace capability, clicking the Replace button performs the replacement and automatically ...

Discover More

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.

Notify me about new comments ONLY FOR THIS TIP

Notify me about new comments ANYWHERE ON THIS SITE

Hide my email address

What is seven more than 3?

2024-10-28 16:41:21

Gary Scarano

OK, this used to worked on my old mac, buy I just purchased a new mac book pro. Now it will not allow me to search for a footnote number. I have a book with about 600 footnotes and I would like to serch for specific ones, like #557, but my new mac won’t do it. Version 16.90 (24101387) Please help

2022-02-10 13:53:29

Dr Caroline Kaye

Just tried the ^f tip, but Word says ^ is not recognised for the "find" facility.

2020-10-05 15:10:20

Dan Appel

A follow up to my last note. I have a very frustrating dilemma. I produced a document in Indesign which I am in the process of formatting for Kindle. Unfortunately, Adobe has never made it possible to export a document to Microsoft Word which is what Kindle wants for Kindle Create. The work around, according to Adobe and Amazon is to export the document as a PDF and then import the document into Word. It worked fairly well, except, that now Word does not recognize any of the endnote numbers which I want to turn into hyperlinks connected to the Endnote for Kindle and eventually Epub. This is a very long document - almost 600 pages with almost 1000 endnotes. I cannot go back and recreate every Endnote. Any ideas what I can do?

Thanks in advance for your help

2019-05-12 13:41:36

Neil Macowan

I need to find the footnote numbers that appear in the text, not the footnotes per se. How can I do this?

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.