How to Add a Footnote in Word: A Complete Guide

Footnotes are one of those features that look simple on the surface but have more depth than most people realize. Whether you're writing an academic paper, a legal document, or a detailed report, knowing how footnotes work in Microsoft Word — and when they behave unexpectedly — saves real time.

What Is a Footnote in Word?

A footnote is a reference or explanatory note placed at the bottom of a page, linked to a specific point in your main text via a small superscript number or symbol. Word handles the numbering automatically — add one in the middle of a document and every subsequent footnote renumbers itself.

Footnotes are different from endnotes, which collect all references at the end of the document rather than the bottom of each page. Both are managed through the same menu in Word, but they serve different purposes depending on the style guide or document type you're following.

How to Insert a Footnote in Microsoft Word

On Windows (Word for Microsoft 365, Word 2016, 2019, 2021)

1. Click to place your cursor in the main text where you want the footnote marker to appear.
2. Go to the References tab in the ribbon.
3. Click Insert Footnote.
4. Word jumps your cursor to the bottom of the page — type your note there.
5. Click back into the main text to continue writing.

Keyboard shortcut:Alt + Ctrl + F inserts a footnote instantly without touching the ribbon.

On Mac (Word for Microsoft 365, Word 2016 and later)

1. Place your cursor at the insertion point in your text.
2. Click the References tab.
3. Select Insert Footnote.

Keyboard shortcut on Mac:Command + Option + F

In Word for the Web (Browser Version)

The browser-based version of Word supports footnotes, but the feature set is more limited. You can insert basic footnotes via Insert > Footnote, but advanced formatting options — like custom symbols or footnote separators — require the desktop app.

Formatting and Customizing Footnotes 🖊️

Word gives you meaningful control over how footnotes look and behave. Access these settings by clicking the small arrow at the bottom-right corner of the Footnotes group on the References tab.

Number Format Options

Numbering Behavior

• Continuous — numbers run sequentially through the entire document
• Restart each section — numbering resets at every section break
• Restart each page — numbering resets at the top of every page

This distinction matters more than it might seem. Academic papers typically use continuous numbering. Legal briefs often restart per section. If your footnote numbers aren't behaving the way you expect, this setting is usually why.

Applying Changes

Changes made in the Footnote and Endnote dialog box include an Apply button that lets you apply settings to the whole document or from a specific point forward — useful when one section of a document needs different footnote behavior than another.

Editing and Deleting Footnotes

To edit a footnote, simply click on the note text at the bottom of the page and type. The reference in the body text is not editable directly — it's generated automatically.

To delete a footnote, select the superscript marker in the main body text (not the note at the bottom) and press Delete or Backspace. Removing the marker removes the footnote entirely and renumbers all remaining footnotes automatically. This trips people up — deleting text in the footnote area at the bottom leaves the marker in the body text and creates a blank note.

Converting Footnotes to Endnotes (and Vice Versa)

If you've written an entire document with footnotes and need to switch to endnotes — or the other way around — Word handles this without manual work:

1. Open the Footnote and Endnote dialog (References tab → arrow icon in Footnotes group).
2. Click Convert.
3. Choose to convert all footnotes to endnotes, all endnotes to footnotes, or swap them with each other.

This is a document-wide operation and can't be undone section by section from this menu, so it's worth making a backup copy before running it on a long document.

Footnote Styles and Templates 📄

If you're working with a document template — a thesis template from a university, a legal brief template, or a corporate report format — the footnote style may already be predefined. In that case, manually changing the font, size, or spacing of your footnotes might conflict with the template's styles.

The footnote text style in Word is controlled by the "Footnote Text" paragraph style. You can modify this style directly (right-click on the style in the Styles pane) to change the appearance of all footnotes at once rather than formatting them individually. The superscript marker in the body is controlled by the "Footnote Reference" character style.

Variables That Affect Your Experience

How footnotes behave in practice depends on several factors that vary by user:

• Word version — features like footnote continuations across pages and separator line control behave differently between Word 2016, 2019, 2021, and Microsoft 365
• Operating system — Mac and Windows versions of Word have the same core features but occasionally differ in keyboard shortcuts, dialog box layout, and rendering
• Document structure — documents with section breaks, multiple columns, or complex layouts can cause footnotes to behave unexpectedly, particularly with page-level numbering restarts
• Template or style inheritance — if a document was created from a template or converted from another format (like Google Docs or a PDF), existing footnote styles may override your changes
• Collaboration settings — in co-authored documents on SharePoint or OneDrive, footnote edits sync but formatting conflicts can occur if collaborators are on different Word versions

The right footnote setup for a two-page memo looks very different from what works in a 200-page dissertation, and both differ from what makes sense in a shared legal document with tracked changes turned on. Which of those situations you're in shapes which of these options actually matter to you.