Changing the Footnote Continuation Notice

Word allows you to locate your footnotes in a couple different places in your document. Regardless of where you place footnotes, it is possible that a long footnote could overrun the space allocated for footnotes. In such an instance, Word automatically continues the footnote on the following page.

In these cases, you can specify that Word use special wording at the bottom of the footnote area to indicate that they are continued on the next page. For instance, you might want Word to print Continued on next page... at the bottom of any footnotes that will be split. To change the continuation notice, follow these steps:

1. Make sure you are viewing your document in Draft view. (Click on the Draft icon on the status bar, or display the View tab of the ribbon and click Draft.)
2. Display the References tab of the ribbon and click Show Notes (in the Footnotes group).
3. If you have both footnotes and endnotes defined in your document, Word displays the View Footnotes dialog box (Word 2007) or the Show Notes dialog box (later versions of Word). Click the View Footnote Area radio button and then click on OK. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The View Footnotes dialog box.

4. Using the Notes drop-down list at the top of the Footnotes pane, choose Footnote Continuation Notice. The current notice appears in the window. (Note that the notice might be originally blank, so you might not see anything in the window.)
5. Change the notice as desired.
6. When you are satisfied with the wording and appearance of the notice, close the Footnotes pane.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (11222) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Changing the Footnote Continuation Notice.