Mixing Note Numbering

Vera asked if there is a way to use more than one numbering style in footnotes or endnotes. For instance, she would like some endnotes to be in Roman numerals and some in Arabic.

The short answer is that you can mix and match, provided you restructure your document. Remember that the format of how notes are numbered can be modified on a section-by-section basis. Thus, when you want to make a switch in how notes are numbered (perhaps from Roman to Arabic), all you need to do is insert a continuous section break and then change the format of the numbers used in each section. When you later want to change to a different numbering format (perhaps back to Roman), then you insert another continuous section break and again change the formatting.

The granularity of this approach is limited to a paragraph level. You can insert section breaks between paragraphs, if desired. If you want to mix numbering formats for notes within the same paragraph, you are out of luck.

It should be noted that this approach works well with endnotes; it doesn't work that great with footnotes. Footnotes are designed to be displayed at the bottom of a page (in the "foot" of the page), and you can't mix them by section. When you insert a continuous section break on a page that has footnotes, Word automatically treats the break as if it is a "next page" section break. You can then modify the format used for the numbers, but understand that each section will start on its own page, and you can't run them together.

Finally, please note that as you modify the format to be used for your note numbers, you'll want to make sure that the change applies only to the section on which you are working. (This is done in 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 (5485) 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: Mixing Note Numbering.