How to Use Footnotes and Endnotes in Word 2013

Word 2010 For Dummies

The difference between a footnote and an endnote in Word 2013 is that one appears on the same page as the reference and the other appears at the end of the document. Content-wise, a footnote contains bonus information, a clarification, or an aside, and an endnote is a reference or citation. That’s just a guess.

In both cases, the footnote or endnote is flagged by a superscripted number or letter in the text¹. And both are created in the same manner, like this:

¹See? It works!

Click the mouse so that the insertion pointer is immediately to the right of the text that you want the footnote or endnote to reference.

There should be no spaces.
Click the References tab.

You should see the Footnotes Group.
From the Footnotes group, choose either the Insert Footnote or Insert Endnote command button.

A number is superscripted to the text, and you're instantly whisked to the bottom of the page (footnote) or the end of the document (endnote), where you type the footnote or endnote.
Type the footnote or endnote.

There’s no need to type the note's number; it's done for you automatically.

Here are some non-footnote endnote notes:

The keyboard shortcut for inserting a footnote is Alt+Ctrl+F.
The keyboard shortcut for inserting an endnote is Atl+Ctrl+D.
The footnote and endnote numbers are updated automatically so that all footnotes and endnotes are sequential in your document.
Use the Next Footnote button's menu to browse between footnote and endnote references in your document; the Next Footnote button is found in the Footnotes group on the References tab on the Ribbon.
You can see a footnote or endnote's contents by pointing the mouse at the superscripted number in the document's text.
Use the Show Notes button (Footnotes group, References tab) to help you examine footnotes or endnotes themselves. That same button can also be used to hop back to the footnote/endnote reference in your text.
To delete a footnote or endnote, highlight its reference number in your document and press the Delete key. Word magically renumbers any remaining footnotes or endnotes.
To convert a footnote to an endnote, right-click on the footnote itself. Choose the command Convert to Endnote. Likewise, you can convert endnotes to footnotes by right-clicking on the endnote text and choosing the command Convert to Footnote.
For additional control over the footnotes and endnotes, click the dialog box launcher button in the Footnotes group. Use the Footnote and Endnote dialog box to customize the reference text location, format, starting number, and other options.

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About This Article

About the book author:

Dan Gookin has been writing about technology for 20 years. He has contributed articles to numerous high-tech magazines and written more than 90 books about personal computing technology, many of them accurate.
He combines his love of writing with his interest in technology to create books that are informative and entertaining, but not boring. Having sold more than 14 million titles translated into more than 30 languages, Dan can attest that his method of crafting computer tomes does seem to work.
Perhaps Dan’s most famous title is the original DOS For Dummies, published in 1991. It became the world’s fastest-selling computer book, at one time moving more copies per week than the New York Times number-one best seller (although, because it’s a reference book, it could not be listed on the NYT best seller list). That book spawned the entire line of For Dummies books, which remains a publishing phenomenon to this day.
Dan’s most recent titles include PCs For Dummies, 9th Edition; Buying a Computer For Dummies, 2005 Edition; Troubleshooting Your PC For Dummies; Dan Gookin’s Naked Windows XP; and Dan Gookin’s Naked Office. He publishes a free weekly computer newsletter, “Weekly Wambooli Salad,” and also maintains the vast and helpful Web site www.wambooli.com.