I am helping a friend with his manuscript and he asked me for help removing some instances where single digits are placed in his manuscript. They seem to related to text in a different location in the manuscript (possibly cross references). It looks like this

text here
2


more text here

The "2 is uneditable from "Print Layout" view and when I switch to draft view, the "2" is replaced by a blue line and text that would appear pages later in "Print Layout" view.

I have two questions: what is happening here and how to remove the numbers? Any responses appreciated.

I am guessing those were page numbers in a PDF and the document was converted to Word and now they appear to be in the body of the document.

You could create a macro to remove any paragraphs that contain only digits but you will need to look carefully at the content to ensure you don't delete anything that needs to remain in the document.

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Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia

Thanks for your reply. I don't think the document was ever converted to a PDF but the person who did these numbers isn't available to ask. Since they can't be highlighted for manual removal, would a macro address them, and what about the text they "refer" to: would that be taken out with the removal of the number(s)?

Can you post a sample document which demonstrates this issue?

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Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia

Attached is a sample doc from the manuscript. The number "2" appears between the fourth and fifth paragraphs (in Print Layout) and if you switch to draft view, the number is replaced by a paragraph from page#5. Thanks for looking into this!

Attached Files

sample20150317.doc (108.0 KB, 7 views)

That is a footnote. Now the concept of footnotes is to include a small number in the body of the document and then expand on that with one or two paragraphs at the bottom of the page. Unfortunately, in your case, the footnote in your sample actually contains pages of content so it wraps over onto subsequent pages. The anchor for the footnote content is the superscript '1' in the paragraph above the '2'. If you cut that 1 from the page you will discover the multiple pages of the footnote disappear.

You could choose to convert the footnotes to endnotes in which case the 'footnote' appears at the end of the document rather than intruding on that current page and flowing onto the next couple. This would allow the content of the document to 'flow' in a more logical way for both authoring and reading. To convert to endnotes in Word 2013, go to the References tab on the ribbon and click on the little dialog launcher in the bottom right corner of the Footnotes group on that ribbon. In the dialog that appears, click on the Convert button.

Alternatively, you could copy the content of the footnote into the body of the document and then remove the footnote. To do this, click in the paragraph under the '2' and press Ctrl-A to select the entire footnote text and then copy it to your clipboard. Then go to the little superscript 1 and delete it and then paste in your clipboard contents to wherever that text needs to go.

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Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia

Thank you for your looking into this and I will be communicate this solution to the author and decide what the next best step should be. Again, thank you.