Yes, this is exactly what I am seeing. MS Word is allowing the 'last line' containing the footnote reference to remain as the last line, and putting the footnote text on the succeeding page. This is the entire reason for my thread. How could MS Word do this?! And how could this not be a bug?! The program should never allow a footnote reference to remain on one page, and its footnote text to begin on the next. That creates a completely confusing situation for the reader.

Ok, but then MS Word should not permit it to remain like this. For such a developed program, it should be an automatic feature that in this case it will push the 'final line' to the next page so that the reference and its footnote coincide on the same page.

So you'd rather have half the page empty because of this when someone has formatted the paragraph containing the footnote reference as 'keep lines together' and maybe even the previous one as 'keep with next'?

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

We'd have to consider what is best in a variety of scenarios; but I am talking about the final line of the page, and not an extreme situation as you have presented. MS Word has been developed with immense sophistication and would have I think the capacity to distinguish between a single line being moved versus making half a page empty.