Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Change or Remove the Horizontal Line Above Footnotes in MS Word 2007

This should be a simple thing, right? If you don’t want a separating line above the footnotes, just remove it. In my case, the end notes flow to several pages, and a line is still being put at the top of every page, conflicting with the page header.
I look around and tried to find how to do this, but (a) the help documentation doesn’t seem to say, at least not in a place I thought to look and (b) most of the answers on the Web refer to the same set of instructions from years ago for Word 2003, even when they claim to be for 2007. The instructions are actually almost the same, except that Word 2007 no longer has a “normal” view, which is what you are supposed to start with in the instructions.
Anyway, here is how to do it in Word 2007
  • Select Draft from the View tab on the ribbon
image
  • Select “Show Notes” from the References tab. If you don't see “Show Notes,” be sure you're looking at “References” and not “Review.”
image
  • Now you should see your notes in the bottom pane, below this menu:
image
  • Since “All Endnotes” is the first item in the drop-down box, you would think that the other options would be “All Footnotes” or similar. However, this is where you select the separator formatting & other options. Select “Endnote Separator.” I suppose if you have footnotes, you will see “Footnote Separator.”
image
  • Now you can delete the separator or define a new one. I don’t know if a graphic can be substituted; I couldn’t find a way. Be sure to re-define the “Endnote Continuation Separator” also, if you need to; it’s what appears on subsequent pages.
image
Thanks to Rob van der Heijden whose post was the one that finally got me on the right track!

27 comments:

  1. Thank you sooooooooo much. You saved my time in searching.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Very useful, cheers

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you in heaps.
    You've made it so easy.
    I would have spent a lot of time on this if not for the information above.
    Thank you again.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thank you! This has been so helpful, since searching MSWord's own help menu left me without an answer!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks! I thought the line I was getting was just one of those pesky border lines that appear when you do three dashes in a row followed by an enter, and I kept wondering why the help instructions I had found for that didn't work. Once I worked out it was only happening where I had footnotes, I found this article and it helped so much!!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks so much - there were 4 of us in the office all puzzling over this!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Awesome. Thank you! I can not believe it's such a hassle to change that little thing.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Thank you for these instructions. I have been trying to work out how to do this and swearing at Word for quite some time!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Thanks so much, this was very helpful

    ReplyDelete
  10. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Legend. Thanks a lot!!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Thank you very much. This is very helpful

    ReplyDelete
  13. You're the man. Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  14. Thank you!!!! Finally can fix this annoying problem...

    ReplyDelete
  15. THANK YOU SOOOO VERY MUCH! Easy, straightforward, and right on the money. I was taking forever to figure this out before I read this!

    ReplyDelete
  16. Thanks, this is very helpful indeed! The screenshots are especially useful. Great idea.

    ReplyDelete
  17. when i am in draft i am not able to click on "show notes" as it is in grey. what do i do?

    ReplyDelete
  18. what about the bolder line underneath it,.. I cannot delete it..??

    ReplyDelete
  19. Brilliant, thank you!!

    ReplyDelete
  20. Thank you so much. WordPerfect is SO MUCH EASIER!!!

    ReplyDelete
  21. Amazing--over 70 attempts to remove an font that would not embed but that no search could locate.
    appreciate the wisdom!

    ReplyDelete
  22. Am so grateful...this was really helpful
    It saved me alot!

    ReplyDelete
  23. Thank you very much. This was very helpful.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Thank you!
    I would have never found that on my own!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  25. Thank you so much! I wasted a lot of time with unhelpful instructions before finding yours--which worked!

    ReplyDelete