footnote mess

[Amir Fink]

Hi,

I recently bought a new laptop with Vista Business, to which I transferred
all my old Word 2003 documents. One document (about 70 pages with 150
footnotes) is driving me crazy, as all of a sudden, all the footnotes got
scrambled. For example: 1) footnotes can appear several pages before the
actual reference to them (reference to f. 20 on p. 6, but the footnote text
itself already appears on p. 3), 2) groups of foonotes now occupy an entire
page(s), and although they appear in the right numerical order (1-5, for
instance), they are not located in the right place within the document. In
short, it's a huge mess. In addition, the formatting of the footnotes got
all ruined: the numbers are no longer superscript, the first line is no
longer indented, and so forth. I tried to fix this through styles and
formatting, but nothing I do seem to help. A virus check found nothing, and
again, this is a brand new computer (2-week old), and problems with the
document began on day one almost.

any ideas what could have gone wrong? I am at a total loss here...

thanks,
Amir Fink

 

[garfield-n-odie [MVP]]

See http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/FootnoteOnDiffPage.htm .

But I suspect two underlying problems described at
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/sharing/WillMyFormatChange.html are that:
1. you have a different printer driver and/or different print layout
options on your new computer, and
2. Word paragraph styles are defined differently on your new
computer vs. your old computer and styles are set to automatically update.

The styles problem can be fixed by copying styles from the document
template on your old computer to the document template on your new
computer. Unfortunately you don't appear to know what version of Word
you're using on your new computer. In Word 2003 or earlier, you copy
styles using the Organizer tool in Tools | Macro | Macros | Organizer |
Styles tab. In Word 2007, click on Home tab | Show the Styles Window |
Manage Styles | Import/Export.

 

[Amir Fink]

Thanks. I am using Word 2003, by the way. I tried to follow your
instructions, but I guess I am unclear about something: since only this one
file seems to be corrupted, should I transfer styles from a "good" document
to the corrupted one? should I perhaps make changes to the normal template?
If I wanted to make a new start, and simply redefine "normal" - 1) how do I
do it, and 2) would it affect all the other documents that were written using
the old normal? I wonder if one way to fix the problem I have is to redefine
normal, and then cut and paste the text from my corrupted document (would
that help?)

thanks a lot
Amir

 

[garfield-n-odie [MVP]]

Is the problem document based on your Normal.dot template or some other
template that maybe isn't on your computer? If it is not based on your
Normal.dot template, then try attaching your Normal.dot template to the
document. If it is based on your Normal.dot template, then I would make
a copy of the problem document, and then experiment on the copy with
copying styles from a good document to it.