Converting Footnotes to Endnotes

Footnotes and endnotes are an important part of many documents. If you have a document that includes many footnotes, you may need to convert all those footnotes to endnotes. This is a common occurrence to meet the needs of different audiences—some prefer footnotes and some prefer endnotes.

To convert all your footnotes to endnotes, follow these steps if you are using Word 2002 or Word 2003:

1. Choose Reference from the Insert menu, and then choose Footnote from the resulting submenu. Word displays the Footnote and Endnote dialog box. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Footnote and Endnote dialog box.

2. Click the Convert button. Word displays the Convert Notes dialog box. (See Figure 2.)



Figure 2. The Convert Notes dialog box.

3. Make sure the Convert All Footnotes to Endnotes radio button is selected.
4. Click OK to close the Convert Notes dialog box.
5. Click Cancel to close the Footnote and Endnote dialog box.

If you are using Word 97 or Word 2000, follow these steps instead:

1. Position the insertion point within the section that contains your endnotes (the main body of your document).
2. Choose Footnote from the Insert menu. Word displays the Footnote and Endnote dialog box.
3. Click the Options button. Word displays the Note Options dialog box.
4. Click the Convert button. (This button is only available if there are footnotes in the document.) Word displays the Convert Notes dialog box.
5. Make sure the Convert All Footnotes to Endnotes radio button is selected.
6. Click OK to close the Convert Notes dialog box.
7. Click Cancel to close the Note Options dialog box.
8. Click Cancel to close the Footnote and Endnote dialog box.

At this point all your footnotes are dutifully converted to endnotes and your entire document is repaginated to reflect the change in layout.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (8613) 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: Converting Footnotes to Endnotes.