Problem with footnotes in Word 2007

[JohnO]

I am trying to delete footnotes in part of a document but the footnote number
does not appear in the text. when I go to Review and look for previous foot
note I go to, for instance, foot note 3, but then when I go to next footnote,
I go to the blank space in the text where there is no footnote!! this happens
three times so my footnotes in the document go from 3 to 7 and I can't figure
out how to delete the ghost footnotes that don't show up either by a number
in the text, or in the footnote section at the bottom of the page. Any
ideas??? Many thanks.

 

[grammatim]

Does Find actually takes you to an invisible character (so it shows
you a highlighted empty space)? If so, you could just Backspace or
Delete it. Or does it take you to a sliver between a character and a
blank space? Then maybe the note references are Hidden, and if you
Show Non-Printing Characters (Ctrl-Shift-8), they'll become visible
and you can see what you're deleting.

Did this by any chance start out as a Word Perfect document?

 

[JohnO]

Hi, thanks for your response. I'm not sure what Find is in Word 2007??? Re
the footnotes, when I try to go to 'next footnote' starting at number 3, I
get three blanks where the cursor goes to the end of a word but there is no
footnote number, nothing to delete or change, and there is no footnote at the
bottom of the page. This document may have started out as a Word 2003 doc,
then was saved to the .docx format, I'm not sure. Thanks.
--
Author
Whitefish, Montana

Does Find actually takes you to an invisible character (so it shows
you a highlighted empty space)? If so, you could just Backspace or
Delete it. Or does it take you to a sliver between a character and a
blank space? Then maybe the note references are Hidden, and if you
Show Non-Printing Characters (Ctrl-Shift-8), they'll become visible
and you can see what you're deleting.

Did this by any chance start out as a Word Perfect document?

 

[JohnO]

Hi again, As a follow up question, if I wanted to delete all footnotes,
whether I could see them or not, and then start all over again inserting
footnotes, how would I do that? Thanks.
--
Author
Whitefish, Montana

Does Find actually takes you to an invisible character (so it shows
you a highlighted empty space)? If so, you could just Backspace or
Delete it. Or does it take you to a sliver between a character and a
blank space? Then maybe the note references are Hidden, and if you
Show Non-Printing Characters (Ctrl-Shift-8), they'll become visible
and you can see what you're deleting.

Did this by any chance start out as a Word Perfect document?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Ctrl+H to open the Replace dialog. Put ^f in the "Find what" box and leave
the "Replace with" box empty.

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

Hi again, As a follow up question, if I wanted to delete all footnotes,
whether I could see them or not, and then start all over again inserting
footnotes, how would I do that? Thanks.

 

[JohnO]

Hi, I did as you instructed and it found all the footnotes with numbers, but
still did not identify where the 'ghost' footnotes are, numbers 4,5 and 6.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Was Hidden text visible when you did the search? Find won't find anything
that's Hidden.

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

 

[grammatim]

For the third time: did you Show Hidden Text?

Did you Delete whatever "Next footnote" landed you on, even if you
couldn't see anything?

Find is, as it always has been, Ctrl-F. Find and Replace is, as it
always has been, Ctrl-H.

 

[JohnO]

Thanks for the help Suzanne. I checked for hidden text but none showed up.
So to solve the problem, I just deleted the paragraphs where the ghost
footnotes were indicated and then retyped. That solved the problem so now
all footnotes are in the proper sequence. All is well !! thanks.

John

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Sometimes that's all you can do. You don't really have to delete an entire
paragraph; just use Find to find the "ghost" note reference marks, then
select a few characters on either side of that position, Delete, then retype
those characters.

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