Hi: Can someone help me to format my footnotes so that they don't wrap to the next page. It seems that WORD 2003 TAKES the "available space on the page" and only includes the portion of a footnote that fits there - so that some footnotes end up getting spread out over multiple pages. I'd like all of my footnotes to appear, in their entirety, at the bottom of the page on which the footnote reference number occurs. Thanks very much in advance.

LingoQ How are you creating your footnotes? Are you starting with Insert on the menu bar, and then selecting Reference, Footnote, and then using the special footnote composition area to type your footnotes? Thanks so much for your response, Soybean. Yes, that's exactly how I created the footnotes.

I've developed a work-around, but it's not a solution I'm happy with. I went into the body text and inserted a manual page break a line or two from the bottom of the problem page. That effectively made more space so that the 2nd HALF of the footnote, which had been bumped to the next page, rejoined the beginning of the note. But I had to do that 8 times in a 40 page paper - not fun.

When I consult the Help file: Under "Footnote Troubleshooting," > "Part of the footnote GETS moved to the next page" there's this explanation:

Microsoft Word automatically moves the part of the footnote that does not fit in the available space to the next page. The amount of available space depends on the amount of text on the page, the margin settings for the document, and the number and length of the footnotes.

If you think of another fix, I'd love to hear about it. I'm a little flummoxed that Word would have such a bug. Or perhaps I'm missing something. Hmm, at the moment, I don't know of another fix. I did a test earlier today. I opened a 2 page Word (2003) file that had no footnotes in it. I inserted a footnote in a paragraph on the 1st page; I had two lines of text in the footnote. I then closed the footnote panel and displayed the page in Print Preview. The footnote appeared at the bottom of the first page, as desired. I then added more text to the footnote to increase the number of lines and again opened Print Preview. The entire footnote remained on the first page. To allow room for it, Word moved lines from the bottom of the body of the page down to the next page, which I believe is what you want, right?

I don't know WHETHER this matters but, when you add a footnote, you have the option of selecting "Bottom of page" or "Below text". Which are you selecting?

Could you try this? Copy some text (more than one page), with no footnote, to a blank document. Then, insert a footnote somewhere in the mid-section of the first page. Put enough text in the footnote to make it a multiple line note then display the page in Print Layout View or Print Preview and see how Word handles the footnote.