Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations strongm on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

can't delete footnotes

Status
Not open for further replies.

pubgirl

Technical User
Jun 11, 2003
15
US
I have an author's Word 2000 document with many footnotes set up to number continuously. If I try to delete one, by going into the text, selecting the note number, and hitting delete, it only takes away the number in the text and won't delete (or let me delete) the actual footnote text it is linked to.

I can find no instructions on another way to approach this.

The strange part is, if I insert a new footnote in the middle of the document, it works fine, re-numbers everything, AND let's me delete that one... what is going on with the existing footnotes that won't let me make changes?

Any suggestions would be appreciated. I'm working under a tight deadline...OF COURSE!
 
select number & text, then delete.
works?
 
No. Footnote number in the text deletes, but the footnote number and reference (if you View/Footnotes) doesn't delete. IF I try to delete it in the Footnote view manually, I get an error msg: This is not a valid action for Footnotes.
 
Okay everyone, after hours of investigation.... The "Track Changes" feature was enabled, but not showing the highlights. Because of this, changes to the footnote section and any renumbering would not occur, but you couldn't see WHY.

Everything behaves the way it should with regards to adding and deleting footnotes after all track changes were accepted/rejected.

Thanks anyway!!
 
Can't delete footnotes! checked an old thread and it does not appear to be a track changes problem, no renumbering occurs when i delete the reference mark in the text and the footnote text does not delete. Also the footnote formatting line at the bottom of the page does not disappear even when footnote text has been manually removed...argh, any help is appreciated--working in Word 2000...
 
sksw, what is your ultimate goal with the document? are you trying to get rid of all the footnotes or change/edit them?

If you are just trying to delete them, have you tried a program such as Notestripper? It will strip out all the footnotes or endnotes, break the links, and make them text that is easy to delete. Get a trial version at The program is inexpensive and can be helpful with a variety of footnote editing needs.

I would notestrip the footnotes. It will put all the footnote text at the end of the document (or where you specify) and you can easily delete. The links to the numbers in the text will break and you should lose the footnote formatting line at the bottom. The only downside is you'll have to delete the footnote reference numbers in the text too, but you could probably do a search for superscript to locate them easily.
 
Hit Alt-F11 to open the VBA editor. Open the "ThisDocument" module, and paste this in:
Code:
Sub DeleteFootnotes()

Dim c As Object
For Each c In ThisDocument.Footnotes
    c.Delete
Next

End Sub
Run the code and all footnotes will be deleted.
You can delete the code afterwards if you don't want it in your document.

-------
[sup]I am not responsible for any "Sponsored Links" which may appear in my messages.[/sup]
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top