Word Spellcheck finds old footer

[Andrea]

I just ran a spell/grammar check on a document in Word 2003 and it found an
error in a footer--but that footer has been replaced. I can't find it in the
document in Print view or when I print it out. Why is this happening, and
can I make it go away?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Quite likely it is a First Page or Even footer that is not currently enabled
(Layout tab of Page Setup). Word seems to save the content of these
headers/footers in case you choose to reenable them. (Or, more likely, it is
one of those things that is not currently appearing because the sections are
too short.)

 

[Andrea]

This is very strange. Now Spellscheck no longer picks this up, but when I
search for the word "rural" that was originally in the footer but is no
longer there, Find takes me to the original footer, which it says is the
page 1 footer. However, I've just checked again and all 3 pages have the
same (new) footer without that word. There are no section breaks, and
neither box (different first page or odd/even) is checked on the Layout tab
for each of the pages.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If you check both boxes, do you see an old footer that contains the word?

 

[Andrea]

Yes! I don't understand what that means. That footer was replaced when I
revised my document. Why is it still there?? I ran out of time and had to
send this document before you responded again. Is this old footer something
other people will see? I've now deleted it, but I don't want it to be seen
by the people I sent it to!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Recipients won't see the other footer (or even suspect it exists) unless it
for some reason occurs to them to check those boxes, but it's worth
remembering that Word does save this data somewhere.

 

[Andrea]

Thank you for your help. This never would have occurred to me. I'll be sure
to correct it in future documents!