Here’s a common question about Footnotes in Word. “When I insert a Footnote into my Word document a separator line is automatically inserted above the footnote reference. Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Processor: Intel. I am using Word 2008. I have created a document with end notes. At the top of the end notes section there is a thin black line that separates the end notes from the rest of the document.
Troublesome Lines Word users are often troubled by various kinds of lines where they are unexpected and unwanted. This article will address various causes of these lines, how to remove them, and in some cases how to prevent them from occurring in future. Just to be clear, the lines we’re talking about here are straight lines not associated with specific text, as opposed to red, green, or blue wavy underlines (which are related to spelling and grammar) or dotted text underlines, which indicate Hidden text. The lines we’ll discuss are:.
(skip directly here if you’ve “tried everything”). There are two kinds of gridlines in Word, and they cause confusion both individually and together (because users looking for a button to control one kind often stumble upon the control for the other). Table gridlines Table gridlines are probably the most commonly seen. If a table does not have borders (lines between cells that will print), then it is helpful to display gridlines in order to see the cell boundaries (if you have “Text boundaries” enabled, you will see cell boundaries in Print Layout view even without displaying gridlines). Here’s how to turn them on or off:.
Word 2003 and earlier: On the Table menu, click Show Gridlines to display them, Hide Gridlines to turn them off. Word 2007 and above: With the insertion point in a table, so that the contextual Table Tools tabs are displayed, select the Layout tab. In the Table group (far left), click View Gridlines to toggle the display (the button wording does not change, but its appearance does). Drawing grid The drawing grid is one of the most perplexing problems for some Word users because it seems to appear without warning.
One can only speculate that a user may have enabled it in an attempt to display table gridlines. It makes the document background look like graph paper, with a ⅛-inch grid covering the page. To turn the drawing grid on or off:. Word 2003 and earlier: Right-click on a toolbar to display the Toolbars menu. Select Drawing to display the Drawing toolbar.
On the toolbar, click Draw (far left end) and select Grid from the menu. Check or clear the check box for “Display gridlines on screen.” Note: If you actually want to display the drawing grid, you can also set the grid interval and origin. Note that the grid interval affects the placement of “click stops” (default intervals) for tab stops on the horizontal ruler, so you may want to adjust the grid interval to facilitate tab stop insertion. Word 2007 and above: On the View tab, in the Show/Hide group, check or clear the box for “Gridlines.” The fact that this setting is available even when the insertion point is not in a table may explain why the drawing grid is so often enabled in error. Word 2010 Starter: The Starter version of Word doesn’t have a View tab, so a more roundabout method is required. On the Page Layout tab, in the Arrange group (far right), click Align, then View Gridlines (to turn it on or off). The Grid Settings menu item opens a dialog that allows you to set the grid interval and origin (see note above).
Drawing lines rarely cause problems in documents because usually they can be selected and deleted without issue. A drawing line is selected when you get the four-headed arrow shown below. Be aware that a drawing line may be anchored to the header or footer. In such cases, you will need to access the header/footer story (by double-clicking in the header area) in order to select the line. In other cases, a line cannot be selected because the text wrapping style has been set to Behind Text. In such instances, it is necessary to use the Select Objects tool, which selects objects in the drawing layer without affecting text.
Here’s how to access the Select Objects tool:. Word 2003 and earlier: Right-click on a toolbar to display the Toolbars menu. Select Drawing to select the Drawing toolbar. The Select Objects tool is the large white arrow on the far left, next to the Draw menu button.
Word 2007 and above: On the Home tab, in the Editing group (far right), click on Select and choose Select Objects. By default, Word separates footnotes and endnotes from the body text with lines of various lengths.
In Word 2010 and earlier, the Footnote/Endnote Separator is a line 2″ wide extending from the left margin. The Footnote/Endnote Continuation Separator, which appears on pages where a footnote or endnote is continued from the previous page, is a line from left to right margin. Word 2013 and above, while they maintain the Footnote/Endnote Continuation Separator for backward compatibility, actually use only the Footnote/Endnote Separator (even on pages with continued notes) in newly created documents. Generally speaking, if you see one of these separators, it will be because the page contains footnotes or endnotes, and the reason for the line will thus be pretty obvious. Occasionally, however, a separator may remain when notes have been deleted.
This can happen if you delete the footnote or endnote text manually instead of removing the note by deleting the note reference mark in the document body. In such cases, the only way to get rid of the separator is to remove all vestiges of the notes themselves.
To find and delete the unwanted note reference mark:. Word 2010 and earlier: Click on the Select Browse Object button, which is the round button between the two double arrows at the bottom of the vertical scroll bar.
Select Browse by Endnote or Browse by Footnote as appropriate. The function of the “browse arrows” becomes “Previous Endnote/Footnote” and “Next Endnote/Footnote,” and you can use them to skip through the document from one reference mark to the next until you find the one that doesn’t have a note associated with it. Select and delete it. Word 2013 and above: Beginning with Word 2013 (most of) the Select Browse Object functions have been moved to the Navigation pane. If this pane is not open, press Ctrl+F to open it. Then click on the arrow beside the search button (magnifying glass icon). Select Footnotes/Endnotes.
You will see that the box now says “Find: Footnotes/Endnotes,” and there are up and down buttons to search backward and forward in your document. Use these buttons to skip through the document from one reference mark to the next until you find the one that doesn’t have a note associated with it. Select and delete it. All versions: Press Ctrl+H to open the Replace dialog. In the “Find what” box type ^f (for footnote reference marks) or ^e (for endnote reference marks). Leave the “Replace with” box empty.
Click Find Next until you find the reference mark that does not have a note associated with it. Click Replace to delete it (replace it with nothing). Occasionally you may want to edit the note separator(s), either because a specific style manual requires a different appearance or just out of personal preference. For instructions on editing note separators, see “.” The most troublesome lines in Word documents seem to be paragraph and page borders, especially when they have been applied by another user or by Word’s AutoFormat As You Type feature.
Paragraph borders The distinctive feature of these lines is that you can select them and move them up and down, but you can’t delete them. When you select them, instead of getting the four-headed Move arrow that you get with graphic lines, you get a double-headed arrow with lines between.
To remove a paragraph border, place the insertion point in the paragraph above the border and proceed as follows:. Any version: Press Ctrl+Q. This resets the paragraph formatting to the default for the style, which presumably doesn’t include borders. Note, however, that this will also remove any other direct paragraph formatting as well as the border, so you may prefer one of the following version-specific procedures. Word 2003 and earlier: Go to Format Borders and Shading and click the preset picture for None. Alternatively, click the arrow beside the Borders button on the Formatting or Tables and Borders toolbar and click the No Border button in the flyout palette. Word 2007 and 2010: On the Home tab, in the Paragraph group, the bottom right button is for borders.
If you have not previously used it during a Word session, its tool tip will say “Bottom Border.” Click the arrow beside it to open the Borders menu and select No Border. Word 2013 and above: On the Home tab, in the Paragraph group, click beside the Borders button to open the menu and select No Border.
When you have removed the border from a given paragraph with one of the procedures above, you may find that the border has “moved” to the paragraph above. This can result when you have previously pressed Enter several times trying to get rid of the line. Every time you press Enter, you create a new paragraph formatted the same as the previous one, which has acquired a Bottom Border. This won’t be obvious because, when several consecutive paragraphs have the same “Bottom Border” formatting applied to them, the border appears below only the last of them (Word takes “bottom” very literally). When you remove the border from the last paragraph, it then “moves up” to the previous paragraph with that formatting. In order to remove the border completely, you need to select all the affected paragraphs and either press Ctrl+Q or choose No Border. You may wonder how you got this line in the first place.
For this you can probably thank Word’s AutoFormat As You Type feature. By default, if you type three or more hyphens (-), underscore characters , equals signs (=), asterisks (.), tildes , or hash signs (#) and press Enter, Word will apply a thin, thick, double, broken, zigzag, or thick-and-thin border to the bottom of the previous paragraph (see image below). If you are a writer who customarily separates text with a row of three asterisks, you will perhaps have encountered this phenomenon.