How to edit footnote & endnote numbering style format

As is, footnotes and endnotes references are formatted simply as superscript numbers. This creates a readability issue if there are multiple references together. So, for example, here: ...example¹²³ — it is virtually impossible to see whether this refers to references to one, two or three references; i.e. is:

• 123;
• 1, 2 & 3;
• 12 & 3; or,
• 1 & 23

To avoid this ambiguity, I prefer to format reference numbers in brackets such that they would appear thus:

• [123]
• [1][2][3]
• [12][3]
• [1][23]

In this was the ambiguity could be resolved. However there seems to be no way to the format footnote and endnote reference style [Footnote Reference] or [Endnote Reference] — either in the text or in the footnote/endnote themselves.

For reference, see:

• Citation styles with numbers in brackets [Updated 2024]

To get around this, I have been forced to manually insert "[" and "]" characters — which is, of course, massively tedious…

In an attempt to automate this, I tried to edit [Endnote Reference] number format — hoping that I could edit the [Endnote Reference] number format syntax can be edited in list numbering in a similar way that [Numbering Library] enables user to edit the numbering of list syntax — however this appears to be impossible because several of the style formatting options are greyed-out (I am also unsure that would work as described above if it was not greyed-out).

Is there a way to enable the greyed-out formatting options for [Footnote Reference] or [Endnote Reference]?!? If there is, would that allow me to automatically format refrence numbers as described above?

For example, I can edit:

• Font…
• Border…
• Language…
• Shortcut key…
• Text effects

Other formatting options are greyed out, including:

• Paragraph…
• Tabs…
• Frame…
• Numbering…

Why is this?!? Is there a way that I can edit footnote reference styles?

Any suggestions?

Or, maybe this could be repurposed as a new feature request to the msOffice development team?

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