Disappearing Footnotes

Correction. I opened the document in Word 2021.

I think I solved the problem of partial disappearance of footnotes in my Word 2003 document.

I opened the document in Word 2018 (I think it is) and copied the entire document (except for the last paragraph marker) and then pasted it into a blank document.

I then saved that document in the *.docx format and now I see all the missing footnotes.

I also tried printing the problem document in both version of Word to a PDF file with "reveal codes" enabled. I could see the missing footnotes with "reveal codes" enabled but what I could see in the document did not transfer to the PDF version, so no joy there.

Anyway, all smiles now as my document is 147 pages long, has 460 footnotes, and an extensive index.

I had this problem. A range of about 44 footnotes would not display in the footer though I could see the footnote reference in the text. Hovering over that number with the mouse pointer, however, did not produce a floating box with the text of the footnote. I fiddled with page layout and header/footer settings (0.3" reset to 0.5") and page marginsa and deleted the normal.dotm file per a suggestion from ChapGPT. I tried switching between footnotes and endnotes. Copying the entire document (minus last carriage return) to a blank document at least allowed me to add a new footnote within the range of "missing" footnotes but numbering was odd. In a pinch it appears I can use an earlier saved version to add back "missing" footnotes if it comes to that. However, I was amazed to see footnotes appear in print preview and then in a printout of the page but still no display of missing footnotes or text in the floating box.Cut to the chase, turning on reveal code causes the footnotes to DISPLAY in the footer. Still nothing visible of the text of footnote if I hover over footnote marker in text.I am mystified but happy to see the footnotes are still there but the pagination is going to be way off if I have to print with reveal codes ON. :--(PS -- copying the entire document (minus ending carriage return) and pasting to a new blank document doesn't solve the basic problem.

Sir I hve a similiar problem, but it is just one footnote. I published a book that is missing a single footnote. The numbering skips as though it is there, and if I use ctrl + G it goes right to the space where that footnote should be (see image).

Where is my missing footnote and how do I insert it without messing up the numbering?
(see Figure 1 below)

{fig}

This has plagued me for many years. The easiest workaround I have found (just now!) is to toggle the ribbon UI twice (retract then expand or vice versa) using the carat. The endnotes (not tried it with footnotes) all reappear. Once you hit save they disappear again.

I found that my formatting was in APA style. Under the References tab I changed the style to Chicago and my footnotes remained! Success!

Dear John Bray,

That sounds like a really useful solution! But you highlighted what "visible text"? When my footnotes disappear, the whole footnote disappears. Did you highlight the footnote call (the superscript number)? Something else?

Thanks.

I highlighted the visible text and hit command I, to make the footnote italic. Lo and behold, the missing text reappeared (not in italic mode though).

For years I used Mac OS X Word 2011 and I struggled with this infuriating bug. It drove me to despair because it made the process of producing academic documents unnecessarily difficult as entire footnotes would disappear - even if they were only a sentence in length.

Despite scouring the net, the only effective workaround was to close and restart Word. Utterly impractical and absurd. Even on the latest Service Pack and updates, this problem still persists.

Eventually I tired of this and switched to using Pages on iWork 2013 and I've been trouble free ever since.

I'm using Word 2011 for Mac, and have been experiencing disappearing footnotes for weeks, in a half-dozen different documents. From searching other forums, I've learned that this seems to be a Word problem, related to the autorecover / repaginate function, and which Microsoft has no plans to fix.

Even when I control page breaks in order to allow plenty of room for footnotes, lines disappear and reappear from the footnote. Since there is room on the page, nothing gets temporarily pushed to the following page, as some other users have experienced. However, I have observed that this problem seems to affect only the FIRST footnote, the others seem to be more stable. But my documents don't have many footnotes, and they tend to not be more than a few lines long, so perhaps I'm just lucky so far.

The only workaround seems to be to turn off autorecover, which seems a little risky.