Hello,



I'd like to change the formatting of a large number of... numbers in Word. For instance, I'd like to turn superscript numbers into "normal" numbers inside parentheses (I'm working on in-text citations in a long scientific article). Like this:

According to Smith et al.³,...
According to Smith et al. (3),...

The obvious solution seemed to be to find and replace using the "any digit" function (^#), like this (it's in Portuguese but you'll understand):

Sem título.jpg

...but apparently Word doesn't recognize this code in the "replace" field. I thought it would change the formatting around the number while KEEPING the number in the text, but it doesn't work. I couldn't figure any helfpul wildcards either.

Do you have any tips on how to make this work? It's such a simple task, I can't believe Word won't do it.

Are these ordinary footnotes, and do you want the footnotes to be regular text not only in the body of the text, but also in the footnote area? In that case, modify the Footnote Reference character style so that it isn't formatted as superscript.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

For adding the parentheses to Word's formatted footnote references, I'd suggest a wildcard Find/Replace, where:
Find = *
with the Find Style specified as 'Footnote Reference'; and
Replace=(^&)
That will add the parentheses to the footnote references in both the body of the document and at the start of the footnotes also. You can then make all of these non-superscript by changing the 'Footnote Reference' Style.

If you want to limit the action to just the body of the document, don't modify the Style; instead, before doing the Find/Replace, create a new Style based on the 'Footnote Reference' Style named, say, 'Footnote Reference (Body)' without the superscript format, include the new Style's name as one of the Replace parameters, then select the whole of the document body (Ctrl-A). When you execute the Find/Replace and Word asks whether you want to continue, answer No.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]