How do I remove an extra line after a footnote?

[langerr]

I am editing a document in which there appear several extra lines after a
number of the footnotes. Word will sometimes allow me to strip one or two of
these, but gives me the message "This is not a valid action in footnotes"
before the extra lines are all gone. Yes, I am using the view that shows the
spaces and returns as characters in the text, and I have tried this in draft
view as well as in layout view.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Are you actually seeing empty paragraphs (paragraph marks)? Or are you just
seeing space? If the latter, check the Spacing Before/After of the footnotes
after/before the space. If you're seeing paragraph marks and have tried
every possible combination of Delete and Backspace, it's possible that the
paragraph is part of an actual footnote whose reference mark has gotten
deleted (or is hidden). I've seen some very bizarre documents where this has
happened, and it's not immediately evident because the footnote numbering
seems continuous (because the phantom footnote had a custom mark). What you
can try is this:

1. In the document body, go to the footnote reference that precedes the
extra, empty paragraph(s).

2. Click the Select Browse Object button between the browse arrows at the
bottom of the vertical scroll bar and select Browse by Footnote.

3. Click the down arrow (Next Footnote). Do you end up at the next numbered
reference or somewhere in between? If the latter, select a character or two
of text before and after the insertion point (which indicates the position
of the phantom footnote) and delete. Then retype the missing characters.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[macropod]

Hi langerr,

You'll only get that error message if you try to delete the final paragraph mark in a footnote. Try deleting the previous paragraph
marks instead.