I am adding an endnote to a document. There are no footnotes or endnotes in this document so far. Yet, when I add an endnote on the Reference tab, it is given the number '2'. That doesn't make any sense to me. I clicked on "Show notes" and don't see anything besides the '2' on the "Notes" page I created at the end of the document. Why in the world is it showing '2'? I tried clicking on the reference in the text, but saw no way to change the number. How can I fix this, please? Thanks.



I am using Office 2019 on Windows 10.

On the Reference tab click on the small arrow in the bottom right corner of the Footnotes group to display the Footnote and Endnote dialog.
Screenshot 2025-03-30 084732.png

Click on Endnotes and ensure that the number in the Start at box is correct.
Screenshot 2025-03-30 084756.png

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried that, but it seemed to make no difference. Word is acting like there's another endnote already, but I certainly can't see it.

Attached Images

BadNoteNumber.jpg (55.9 KB, 7 views)

What happens if I manually change the number to 1 in the text itself? Will Word make the next endnote number 2? I tried an experiment. I went to the top of the document and inserted an endnote near the top, inserted the line I want the 1 on, and I got the 1 I expected. When I cut and moved that line to page 11 in the document, it turned it into 2. I've done endnotes for years, without a problem. I don't understand this. The last time I had note number problems, I copied my document to a new one and the error disappeared. This time, that didn't work.



I can only assume that somewhere before page 11, there's something that Word thinks is an endnote, but I can't see it.

I would say that there is an endnote already there but not showing. For example, could it be part of a deleted tracked revision and you aren't showing those deletions.

If you add an endnote at the top of the document, does it number as 1? You could move it progressively down the document until it clicks over to 2 which would show you where the 'hidden' endnote is located.

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Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia

Once you have the location where the number trips over, and you have confirmed that it isn't a tracked deletion, then it could be a corruption. You could then cut that chunk of text (where the corruption is hiding) and paste it back in as 'Unformatted text' which should resolve the problem.

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Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia

Thanks. That's exactly what I did. I kept inserting endnotes until I got 2 for the number. I cut that paragraph, pasted it into Notepad, and copied that back in. Whatever was wrong, it went away.


As an aside, where do I go to change the default footnote and endnote formats in Word forever? I started a new document in my efforts to fix this and it changed my endnote numbers to Roman numerals. I thought I had already saved the correct format for all nnew documents, but apparently not.