MS Word footnotes skip numbers when using Track Changes

I'm using MS Word's "Track changes" functionality to edit an academic article with a lot of footnotes. The issue I'm running into is more of a 'feature' than a bug but I'm not sure how to approach it: if I have text with a footnote that I delete, including the footnote, Word keeps that footnote number reserved (technically it is still there, just in a not-yet-accepted change) and thus the footnotes that follow skip over a number. Technically this isn't a problem except that I cannot yet "accept" the changes as I need to submit the edited article for publication with changes included so the editors can see what I've done to improve the article. But at the same time, I want to actually have the footnotes in the article progress sequentially without jumping over numbers. One theoretical solution is to delete the footnote itself without 'track changes' turned on, and then delete the body text, but I don't want to make it look like my work (even material which is deleted) isn't cited properly for obvious reasons.

asked Feb 17, 2016 at 20:29 315 3 3 gold badges 7 7 silver badges 17 17 bronze badges

7 Answers 7

I've had a similar issue. I sent a document to a reviewer, and they returned it having deleted two footnotes with track-changes enabled. In the footnotes I could see the "Deleted" balloon, but couldn't "accept" the change. Eventually I solved it: (based on Word 2016 for Mac)

  1. Go into Draft view
  2. Select References
  3. Find the "Show footnotes" icon (unhelpfully it's not labelled!)
  4. Scroll through the bottom pane until you find reach the "missing" reference numbers (e.g. I was missing "61", so I went to 60 and then read on from there) u
  5. Then look in the upper pane, and you should see the original footnote reference in the draft text, albeit slightly greyed out. Delete that reference number . and hey presto, the numbering goes back to being sequential.
3,196 10 10 gold badges 24 24 silver badges 26 26 bronze badges answered May 28, 2017 at 16:30 71 1 1 silver badge 2 2 bronze badges

I had the same problem: the numbering skipped two numbers, jumping from 6 to 9. I tried everything, but neither one of the solutions described above worked for me.

So this is how I circumvented the problem: I assigned the two footnotes after the missing ones special characters (7 and 8). Thus they were not counted as part of the continuous series. Now these two were taking up the places of the ones I could not delete, and the numbers that followed them were correct again.

answered Sep 23, 2017 at 21:39 11 1 1 bronze badge

I faced the exact same issue. Here's what twiddling around that helped me solve the issue. First go to the Review tab and select All markup from the markup selector. You'll be able to see some deleted footnote in red. But as it's still tracked your endnote will still be present. Delete it (even though it's in red) and you're good to go

answered Nov 25, 2017 at 17:45 Warren Manuel Warren Manuel 11 1 1 bronze badge This didn't work for me with Word 2013. Commented Jun 15, 2018 at 19:27

Save a copy to your desktop for a test (use this as a supporting doc, if needed). In the Review pane, in Tracking select Simple Markup. The footnote numbering will still be out of sequence (due to a deleted reference). Now, in Changes, select Accept > Accept All Changes and Stop Tracking. The numbering will now be in sequence!

Note: Do this step after your reviewer has approved all the tracked changes.

answered Jul 18, 2018 at 17:59 Oracleofthewest Oracleofthewest 11 2 2 bronze badges

The footnotes that follow skip over a number

See below for instructions.

Changing the Way Footnotes Are Numbered

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In Word, footnotes can be automatically numbered from 1 through the number of footnotes in the document. Thus, if your document contains 14 footnotes, they will be numbered 1 through 14.

You can change the way footnotes are numbered, however.

Word allows you to specify both a starting footnote number and whether the numbering starts over with each new section in your document.

Word allows you to change how it handles footnote numbering by following these steps:

  1. Make sure the References tab is selected on the ribbon.
  2. Click the small downward-pointing arrow at the lower-right corner of the Footnotes group. Word displays the Footnote and Endnote dialog box.
  3. Make sure the Footnotes radio button is selected.
  4. Change the Start At value to reflect where you want Word to start numbering.
  5. Change the Numbering area to reflect how you want Word to count your footnotes.
  6. Click on Apply and then Cancel; otherwise click Insert to add a footnote mark at the current document location.