footnotes go to next page

Topic

New Reply

I have some students writing some reports that have footnotes. For several of them, a footnote will print on the page AFTER the page with the actual superscript reference.

I can understand that this can happen if you end up with a footnote way down at the bottom of the page, where there wouldn’t be enough room for another line at the bottom, but some of these are occurring when there is PLENTY of space before the bottom of the page. I’ve had them turn off widow and orphan control, keep with next, etc., but it doesn’t seem to make any difference.

Is there a way to prevent this from happening?

Reply | Quote

Replies

From the latest Woodys Office Watch:
4. THE LAST WORD IN FOOTNOTES
If you’ve ever worked with footnotes in Word, you’ll have
come across Word’s infuriating tendency to put some of the
footnotes on a different page from the footnote reference.
This is a known bug, and the solution is covered at:
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Formatting/F…eOnDiffPage.htm

Reply | Quote

I think this solution is a bit draconian, and there are a couple of things you can check first which may help. First, check Tools/Options/Compatibility and make sure it is set for the version of Word you are using. If the document was created in another program or another version of Word, this may be set incorrectly and that can affect footnote display. Second, make sure the body of the footnote is in the Footnote style. If it’s not, the footnote could break incorrectly. Third, check the margins for that section of the document and make sure that the space allotted for the header and footer is less than the top and bottom margins. They should not be the same or greater. If they are, the footnotes could break incorrectly.

Reply | Quote

You might also check out the following article from the Microsystems website.

http://www.microsystems.com/exp_fracturedfootnotes.htm

Reply | Quote

actually, it’s 2 students of mine who are having the problem at home. My guess is that they’re using Word 97. I’ll ask them to bring it in on a disk so I can forward it to you (I did give them the earlier suggestions, so maybe they have it fixed by now)

Reply | Quote

We have this problem everyday – when we used Word 97 and now with Word 2000 SR2

Go to Tools, options, compatibility, check to make sure “recommended options for” is the Word version you are using, scroll down near the bottom of the list (4th before the last)

look for

Use printer matrix to lay out document, if the box is unchecked

Reply | Quote

sorry, but they fixed the problem before I had a chance to tell them to save the ‘problem’ version.

Reply | Quote

Hi; just wanted to relay my thanks for this thread (and this forum). A coworker was having the ‘footnote not on same page’ problem, and I searched here and found the answer in less than 5 minutes.

Reply | Quote