Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Changing the Footnote Separator.

Changing the Footnote Separator

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated December 13, 2025)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003

If you are using footnotes in Word, you have control over where they appear in your document. In other issues of WordTips you learned that you can place them at the end of the text on a page, or at the bottom of the page itself. Regardless of the placement, Word can print a separator between your main document text and the footnotes. The default separator is a solid line, but you can either change or delete the footnote separator, as desired.

To change the footnote separator, follow these steps:

Make sure you are viewing your document in Normal view.
Select Footnotes from the View menu.
If you are using Word 2000 or a later version and you have both footnotes and endnotes defined in your document, Word displays the View Footnotes dialog box. (See Figure 1.) Click on the View Footnote Area radio button and then click on OK.

Figure 1. The View Footnotes dialog box.

Using the Notes drop-down list at the top of the Footnotes window, choose Footnote Separator. Word displays the current separator in the window.
Change or delete the separator, as desired.
When you are satisfied with the appearance of the separator, close the footnote 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 (1847) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Changing the Footnote Separator.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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