How do I decrease the size of the footnote area in Word?

[Pistaccio]

I'm using word 2003 and I don't know how to decrease the footnote area. When
I insert footnotes, word automatically leaves a lot of space above them that
I cannot use to write the regular text. I would like the footnote separator
to be just above the footnotes but I can't find how to do this.

 

[Stefan Blom]

1. Make sure footnote placement is "Bottom of page": On the Insert
menu, click Reference, and then click Footnote (in Word 97/2000, it's
just Insert>Footnote). Click the All Footnotes tab. Make sure "Place
at" is set to "Bottom of page". Click OK, and then click Close.

2. Make sure no spacing has been added to the footnote separator:
Click Normal on the View menu. Click View>Footnotes. In the Footnote
pane, click "Footnote Separator". Choose Format>Paragraph. Click the
Indents and Spacing tab. If you see anything but 0 (zero) for Spacing
Before and Spacing After, change it to 0. And make sure Line Spacing
is set to "Single". Click OK to close the dialog box.

3. Close the Footnote pane.

 

[Pistaccio]

Hi Stefan,

Thanks a lot for your reply but I had already done all the things you
mention and still had the problem.

Do you have any other idea?

 

[Stefan Blom]

Make sure that the footnotes don't contain any empty paragraphs: Click
the ¶ button on the Standard toolbar to turn on display of nonprinting
marks. If you see any unnecessary paragraph marks (¶) in the
footnotes, delete those. For example:

1 This is my first footnote.¶
¶ <-- Place the cursor before
this paragraph mark and press
BACKSPACE.
2 This is my second footnote.¶

Another thing to check is that the Footnote Text paragraph style has
Line Spacing set to "Single" and that Spacing Before and/or After are
both set to either a small amount (say 2-4 pt) or to 0 (zero).

 

[Pistaccio]

Hi Stefan,

Thanks for replying again. There were no paragraphs signs, I had checked
that already.

Anyway, it seems it was something wrong with that particular document
because I selected all and copied it into a new document and there the
footnotes didn't leave so much space beneath them. It was still not perfect
but way better and the rest of the problem, I discovered, came from some
"spaces" in the footer section.
I still don't know why copying the whole stuff into a new document was able
to solve this but it did...
Thanks for your help anyway

 

[Stefan Blom]

Anyway, it seems it was something wrong with that particular
document

because I selected all and copied it into a new document and there the
footnotes didn't leave so much space beneath them.

Documents sometimes get corrupted. Copying the contents (except for
the final paragraph mark) into a new document is one of the fixes
covered in the article about corruption at
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/CorruptDoc.htm.

It was still not perfect
but way better and the rest of the problem, I discovered, came from
some
"spaces" in the footer section.

What kind of spaces are you referring to? How did you manage to delete
them?

 

[Pistaccio]

I didn't know documents can get corrupted. The article you mention was very
interesting (though scary because it means my document can get corrupted
again).
Thanks for letting me know about this.

To reply to your question:

What kind of spaces are you referring to? How did you manage to delete
them?

I clicked on "view header and footer", then I clicked inside the footer
area, I used the arrows to go to the bottom of the area and then I used the
delete button to erase a few lines. (I don't know how those "lines" got
there, maybe because of the corruption, because I had never typed them in
myself).

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If you paste text into a footer, an extra, empty paragraph is created. No
matter how carefully you exclude a paragraph mark when selecting and copying
text and include it when pasting, you'll still get an extra paragraph.

FWIW, was this entire thread about your footer rather than footnotes, or
were the footer problems causing an apparent problem with the footnotes?

 

[Pistaccio]

Hello Suzanne,

I hadn't pasted anything into the footer. The only thing I had put in it was
the page number but using the insert page number thing from the menu.

And no, the entire thread was not about the footer. There was also a problem
with the footnotes (which went away when I pasted the whole document into a
blank one). It was the footnote problem that was the most important one
(making me lose almost a fourth of the page space). I only gain a little more
space with the footer problem.
BTW, what does FWIW stand for? (Sorry, english's not my native tongue)

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

FWIW = for what it's worth

 

[Tracey L]

I had the same problem with blank lines above the footnote. Cured it by:
Click Normal on the View menu. Click View>Footnotes. In the Footnote
pane, click "Footnote Separator". Then pressing 'Reset'

 

[Bina]

Hi Tracey L.

I want to thank you for your advice. It was so helpful to me! I have been
struggling with this problem for years now and every time I had a big project
to hand in at University, I was anxious if this problem would arise again.
Thank you very much - you saved my day!

/Bina

 

[João]

Guys, Thank you! It was quite helpful.
Another thing isto check also the spaces or paragraph marks in the footnote
continuation separator and notification.
Once I removed the additional space (in the footnotes pane in Normal view)
it was magicaly solved!
Thanks!