I'm working on a huge document in which the author, rather than using auto-footnotes, has inserted superscript numbers where he wants footnotes. I need to turn these all into auto-footnotes.

I'm looking for a macro that will essentially do the following:

With a range of text selected (where the range could be the full document):

* find the first superscript number, or run of numbers (some of them go up t o 3 digits)
* replace it with an auto-footnote marker & create the corresponding footnote (it doesn't need to populate it, all that text is in a separate file so I will have to paste it in later)
* repeat until there are no more superscript numbers to be found.

Has anyone come across such a thing, or can see easily how you would script it? I'd be very grateful of recommendations as doing it manually is taking FOREVER - it's a 760-plus page document and there are hundreds and hundreds of markers. Thanks!

PS I'm not sure if it's Office 2016 I'm on but that seemed to be the latest version I could select for Mac - it's version 16.57. I could borrow my daughter's laptop instead if someone has one that runs on another version but not necessarily on Mac.