Getting Rid of Hard Returns before Endnotes

Nuala has a document that uses endnotes. However, before the "Notes" heading for the endnotes, there are four or five hard returns that she cannot get rid of. This means her endnotes begin about halfway down the page, which is not where she wants them to begin.

This is actually rather easy to fix once you understand that Word uses what it calls a "separator" that is automatically added between the main body of your document and start of the endnotes. Here's how to display the endnote separator:

1. Make sure that non-printing characters are visible in your document. (Use the Show/Hide tool on the Home tab of the ribbon.)
2. Make sure you are viewing your document in either Draft view or Outline view. (Display the View tab of the ribbon and select one of these views in the Views group.)
3. Display the References tab of the ribbon.
4. Click the Show Notes tool.
5. If you have both footnotes and endnotes defined in your document, Word displays the Show Notes dialog box. (In some versions of Word it may be called the View Notes or View Footnotes dialog box.) Click on the View Endnote Area radio button and click OK.
6. Using the Endnotes drop-down list at the top of the Endnotes window, choose Endnote Separator. Word displays the current separator in the window.

Chances are good, in Nuala's case, that the separator has multiple hard returns within it, and because non-printing characters are displayed, you should be able to see them in the Endnotes window. Delete the hard returns (they look like backwards P characters) and, when you are done making changes in the separator, close the Endnotes window by clicking the X at the upper-right corner of the window.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (13929) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365.