Changing the Footnote Separator

If you are using footnotes in Word, you have control over where they appear in your document. In other issues of WordTips you learned that you can place them at the end of the text on a page, or at the bottom of the page itself. Regardless of the placement, Word can print a separator between your main document text and the footnotes. The default separator is a solid line, but you can either change or delete the footnote separator, as desired.

To change the footnote separator, follow these steps:

1. Make sure you are viewing your document in Normal view or, in Word 2007, Draft view.
2. Select Footnotes from the View menu or, in Word 2007, display the References tab of the ribbon and click Show Notes.
3. If you are using Word 2000 or a later version, and you have both footnotes and endnotes defined in your document, Word displays the View Footnotes dialog box. (Click here to see a related figure.) Click on the View Footnote Area radio button and then click on OK.
4. Using the Notes drop-down list at the top of the Footnotes window, choose Footnote Separator. Word displays the current separator in the window.
5. Change or delete the separator, as desired.
6. When you are satisfied with the appearance of the separator, close the footnote window.