Converting Endnotes to Regular Text

Mark is looking for a way to easily convert endnotes to regular text. What he needs is to have the endnote reference still appear in the main document, and then have the endnote text appear at the end of the main document, but as regular text.

When you insert an endnote into a document, Word does a couple of things. First, it inserts an endnote reference at the insertion point and formats that reference according to the Endnote Reference style. Then, the insertion pointer is placed in the endnote area, which is not part of the main text for your document. An endnote reference is placed there and you can start typing the endnote text. This text is, appropriately enough, formatted using the Endnote Text style.

If, after you've developed a bunch of endnotes, you want to change those endnotes back to "regular text" so that they are not part of that endnote area, you are in for a lot of manual work. Basically, you need to perform the following general steps:

1. Within the endnote area, select the text that makes up the endnote itself, making sure that you don't select the endnote reference that precedes the endnote text.
2. Press Ctrl+C to copy the endnote text to the Clipboard.
3. Move the insertion point into the main document area by clicking somewhere outside the endnote area.
4. Press Ctrl+End to move to the end of the document. The insertion point is now at the end of the document text, but just before the endnotes.
5. Press Ctrl+V to paste the endnote text at the end of the document.
6. Type and format an endnote reference at the beginning of the endnote text you just pasted into the document. You now have two almost identical endnotes: One in the endnote area and one in the main document as "regular" text.
7. Locate the endnote reference within the document, select it, and delete it. This gets rid of the actual endnote (but your regular text still remains at the end of the document).
8. Type and format an endnote reference within the document text. This reference should match the one you typed and formatted in step 6.

Since you need to repeat these steps for every single endnote, it can get quite tedious fairly quickly. If you have a bunch of endnotes, you can shorten the process somewhat by following these general steps:

1. Put the insertion point somewhere within the endnote area and press Ctrl+A. This selects all the endnote text, but not the main document text.
2. Press Ctrl+C to copy the endnotes to the Clipboard.
3. Move the insertion point into the main document area by clicking somewhere outside the endnote area.
4. Press Ctrl+End to move to the end of the document. The insertion point is now at the end of the document text, but just before the endnotes.
5. Press Ctrl+V to paste the endnotes at the end of the document. The formatting within the endnotes should be intact, but each of the pasted endnotes should begin with the number 1.
6. Delete all the endnote references at the start of the pasted endnotes. You can either delete them individually, or you can do a search for a paragraph mark (^p) followed by the number 1. If you choose this method, replace this combination with nothing.
7. Type and format endnote references at the beginning of each of the pasted endnotes.
8. Locate the endnote reference within the document, select it, and delete it. This gets rid of the actual endnote (but your regular text still remains at the end of the document).
9. Type and format an endnote reference within the document text. This reference should match the one you typed and formatted in step 6.

Of course, if you have to convert endnotes to regular text quite often, then you may be interested in using a commercial program to handle it for you. One such program is called Notestripper, from the good folks at Editorium. You can find info on the product here:

http://www.editorium.com/15078.htm

The program is fairly inexpensive, and offers quite a few options.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (11393) 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: Converting Endnotes to Regular Text.