How to Add a Footnote in Microsoft Word

Footnotes are one of those features that look intimidating until you've done it once — then they become second nature. Whether you're writing an academic paper, a legal document, or a report that needs source citations, Word handles footnotes automatically once you know where to look. Here's exactly how it works, plus the variables that affect how you'll want to set them up.

What Is a Footnote in Word?

A footnote is a reference note placed at the bottom of a page, linked to a specific point in your main text by a small superscript number or symbol. Word manages the numbering automatically — if you add or delete a footnote, every other footnote renumbers itself. This is one of the biggest practical advantages over manually typing reference numbers.

Footnotes differ from endnotes, which collect all references at the end of the document rather than at the bottom of each page. Both are inserted the same way; the placement is the main distinction.

How to Insert a Footnote: Step-by-Step

Using the Ribbon (All Desktop Versions)

1. Place your cursor in the body text exactly where you want the footnote marker to appear — typically after a word, phrase, or closing punctuation.
2. Click the References tab in the top ribbon.
3. Click Insert Footnote (keyboard shortcut: Alt + Ctrl + F on Windows, Command + Option + F on Mac).
4. Word instantly places a superscript number at your cursor position and jumps to the bottom of the page, where you type your footnote text.
5. Click back in the body text to continue writing.

That's the core process. Word automatically numbers the footnote and maintains that link throughout the document.

Using the Keyboard Shortcut

If you're working quickly, the shortcut is faster than navigating the ribbon:

• Windows:Alt + Ctrl + F
• Mac:Command + Option + F

Both do the same thing as clicking Insert Footnote in the References tab.

Customizing Footnote Formatting 📄

Word gives you meaningful control over how footnotes look and behave. To access these options:

1. Go to References → Footnotes and click the small arrow in the bottom-right corner of the Footnotes group (Windows), or go to Insert → Footnote on older Mac versions.
2. The Footnote and Endnote dialog box opens.

From here you can adjust:

The "restart each page" numbering option is common in books and long reports where readers shouldn't have to cross-reference a footnote number 47 back to page 3. For academic papers with a single citation list, continuous numbering is typically expected.

Editing and Deleting Footnotes

To edit a footnote, simply click into the footnote text at the bottom of the page and type normally.

To delete a footnote, select the superscript marker in the body text — not the footnote text at the bottom — and press Delete. Word removes both the marker and the associated footnote text, then renumbers everything else automatically. This is a common point of confusion: deleting only the text at the bottom of the page leaves an orphaned marker in the body.

To move a footnote, cut and paste the superscript marker in the body text to a new location. The footnote text follows automatically.

Converting Footnotes to Endnotes (and Back)

If you start with footnotes and later decide endnotes work better for your document, you don't have to redo everything. In the Footnote and Endnote dialog box, there's a Convert button that switches all footnotes to endnotes, all endnotes to footnotes, or swaps the two. This is particularly useful when submitting to publishers or journals that have specific formatting requirements.

Variables That Affect Your Setup 🖥️

How you'll actually use footnotes depends on a few factors worth thinking through:

Document type matters. Academic writing often has strict style requirements (APA, MLA, Chicago) that dictate whether footnotes or endnotes are appropriate, and sometimes mandate specific numbering formats. Legal documents frequently use a mix of footnotes and clause-level annotations. Informal reports may use footnotes loosely for supplementary context.

Word version and platform affect the menu layout. The References tab approach works across Word 2016, 2019, 2021, and Microsoft 365 on Windows. On Mac, the ribbon layout is slightly different, and older versions of Word for Mac placed footnote options under the Insert menu rather than References. The underlying functionality is the same, but the path to find it varies.

Section breaks introduce complexity. If your document is divided into sections (common in long reports or documents with different headers/footers), footnote numbering can be set to restart per section rather than running continuously. Getting this right requires understanding how your sections are structured before you set the numbering behavior.

Styles and templates affect footnote text appearance. The footnote text itself is controlled by the Footnote Text style in Word's Styles panel. If you're working within a company or university template, that style may already be defined — changing it manually could conflict with the template's formatting. Modifying the style itself is more reliable than applying manual formatting to individual footnotes.

Document length and collaboration also play a role. In a short solo document, managing footnotes manually is straightforward. In a long document with multiple contributors, inconsistent footnote handling — some people deleting from the body, others deleting from the footer — can cause numbering issues that require cleanup.

Understanding these layers is what separates a document that just has footnotes from one that handles them cleanly across its entire structure.