footnotes to a table

Question

I would love to be able to put footnotes to my table, in Word 2007.  Can't see anything in here already.  Can it be done?  Any pointers much appreciated!

thanks, Jane.

Answer 1

Table footnotes properly come at the end of the table and use different reference marks from the footnotes to text. That is, the text notes are generally numbered, while footnotes to tables use symbols (asterisk, dagger, etc., if they are primarily text, letters if they are primarily figures). I generally add one more row to the table (unbordered, and with merged cells) and put the footnotes (created manually) there.

Answer 2

You can insert ordinary linked footnotes in table cells, and they will appear at the bottom of the page ("Below text" just means that they appear immediately below the last line of text on short pages as opposed to at the bottom of the page). One caveat is that this works best for short tables or at least tables with fairly short rows. I have seen documents in which users used a table for large amounts of text (for the purpose of having two side-by-side translations of a text, for example) and did not start new rows at regular intervals. The problem is that Word "holds" the footnotes for the page on which the row ends. If you keep piling up many pages and multiple footnotes in a single row, eventually you get to the point where there is not room for all the footnotes on the page where the row ends, and so Word just discards them: they can be seen in the Footnotes pane in Normal/Draft view, but they will not appear on any page in the printed text.

Also, as stated, the proper place for footnotes is at the bottom of the table, and the only way that footnotes at the bottom of the page will work for this is if the end of the table is the end of a page. And of course if the table extends over multiple pages, then some of the footnotes may appear on pages other than the last (which may actually be preferable). General notes, such as "Source" notes or legends should absolutely be at the bottom of the table.

So yes, putting them in a bottom row is still the best method, and they do have to be manually inserted. Ordinarily, however (and especially if there are other "ordinary" footnotes in the document), superscript numbers are not used in tables. If the tables consist primarily of numbers, then superscript letters are preferred. Otherwise, a sequence of *, †, ‡, etc., can be used.

Answer 3

The previous comments defending the Position that this has not been requested before are not appreciated and i obviously should expect a non supportive and defensive poise to be taken by all Microsoft employees when responding to posts on any forum which is unexpected as usually customer services in americia generally are always very helpful and supportive . It would seem that customers opinions are not appreciated . And repetitive answers are the norm. 

Thank you for your code as it is highly appreciated . Perhaps this simple code will added to the gui next time (10years too late). 

I would not suggest this to microsoft myself as it would seem that the responses received are not appreciated unless comming from MVP's. Probably why the legacy products have been stunted with thier progress. <lack of understanding of the customer needs> <focusing on financial gain instead as clearly stated by yourself doug> 

As a foundation user of microsoft products, i did not expect the attacks i have received for stating simple facts or my personal opinion , which had no malicious intent. Although the responses by the MVP's unfriendly i have not taken any issue with them. 

You have misunderstood several points in the responses to your post. For one thing, no one who has replied in this entire thread (much less in replies to you) is a Microsoft employee. Second, I cannot see that anyone has been "unfriendly," much less attacked you or your personal opinion. What we have stated is that (a) we have no personal experience with the feature you request nor any recollection of having seen this request before, and (b) what you are asking for is entirely irrelevant to the question originally asked (and answered) in this thread. A "table of footnotes" is not the same things as "a footnote to a table." If you had started a new thread to ask your question, there would not have been so much initial confusion, but that would not change the fact that we're not familiar with the feature you're requesting.

Most of the suggestions posted at UserVoice are not posted by MVPs, and all are being considered by Microsoft. If you decline to take advantage of this one avenue that Microsoft has provided for submitting feature requests, that is your choice.

Answer 4

Great - thanks both.  Suzanne has got it.  I get the distinction - alhthough I don't have any other footnotes, so it would be nice to be able to do it still!  I shall do as you say & create the impression of...

cheers,

Jane.

Answer 5

Jane,

You can find footnotes on the References tab - Footnotes group  - insert footnotes button. Or do you mean you want to put a caption to your table? In that case same tab - caption group - Insert caption button.

Luc Sanders

MVP - PPT