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 Way Footnotes Are Numbered.
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. The method you use to make the change depends on the version of Word you are using. If you are using Word 97 or Word 2000, follow these steps:
If you are using Word 2002 or Word 2003, follow these steps:
Figure 1. The Footnote and Endnote dialog box.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (3348) 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 Way Footnotes Are Numbered.
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2019-01-23 05:56:12
I.M. Johnson
This advice does not work
Tried selecting start at every section, and applied but it did not do what was promised.
2017-12-09 10:22:56
I would like to know how I can change the numbering of my footnotes so that each chapter in my paper begins with "1" I have already entered all my footnotes in the paper sequentially and now I need to redo them by starting off with "1" in each chapter. Please help--thanks
OJ
2017-11-17 13:01:51
Greg
1. Select Footnote from the Insert menu. Word displays the Footnote and Endnote dialog box.
I don't see the dialog box.
2017-03-01 11:49:00
Joe
This does not tell me how to manually set a footnote number, such as when I want several items to refer to the same footnote, using the same number, which is so simple in word perfect.
2017-01-06 01:34:25
Graham D. McKelvie
Like so many sites, this site does not tell you how to synchronise the footnote number and the footnote content. This is a major defect
2016-03-29 12:25:29
Delores
This method only changed my number 2 to number 1. I wanted it to start with 2. What did I do wrong?
2015-10-14 04:13:21
SG
What happens if you insert an extra footnote into a document in my view is that you now have to renumber manually subsequent footnotes. E.g. if you have footnote 22 followed by footnote 23, but want to insert a new footnote between these two numbers thus making footnote 23 now 24, all footnote numbers thereafter have to be manually adjusted
2013-05-20 17:20:56
In a much edited mss, the footnotes (or endnotes) skip numbers. (For example, the first note comes out "1" but the second is "3"). And there are large gaps in numbering -- 10 or 15 numbers are left out. Help. Thanks, SB
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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: 
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