I am working on a very long document full of footnotes. At the moment, my footnote continuation separator is a short line which shows correctly in the document. However, the continuation separator is set up as a full-page-length line, but despite this, it is showing as a short line every time.

I need to make this a full-page-length line where the footnote continues on the next page. I have been through the draft view, to show notes, and to the continuation separator, and it is set to be a full-page-length. However, it always actually looks like a standard footnote separator. This happens every time in the document where a footnote carries over!



Any ideas what I can do to get it to actually display as the full-page-length continuation separator it is set up as?

The footnote continuation separator is not supported in the most recent version of the Word file format. The separator is only displayed in the footnotes pane for backward compatibility reasons.

If you save the document back to *.doc format, the footnote continuation separator will be visible in a continued footnote in the document as well.

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Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

Well there is an interesting tidbit of information Stefan. I see the MVP status gets you access to very obscure pieces of information.

Did Microsoft bother making this info available to the general user population?

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Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia

Andrew:

I don't remember how I found that piece of information. Someone in the group of Word MVPs probably just noticed a different behavior and asked a question to the product group (there is a mailing list).

The change may be documented somewhere, but it could also be completely undocumented...

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Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

This has happened to me. I had a large file which opened in compatibility mode. I had set the footnote continuation separator as different from the footnote separator. It worked fine. My footnotes frequently continue to the next page.


I then saved it as .docx and went on to revise it, before noticing that the footnote continuation separator, whatever I set it to, was behaving just like the footnote separator.

I still have my original .doc document, but if I go back to it I would have to make the large number of revisions I made to the .docx (some of which I can't remember).

So thank you, Microsoft, for retaining the name of a feature, allowing people to select it, but removing its functionality!

What you can do is post feedback for Microsoft. If you are running Word for Windows, click File > Feedback > Send a Frown.

For more on feedback in various versions of Office programs, see How do I give feedback on Microsoft Office?.

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Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional