Independent Footnotes

Question

I am attempting to insert individual footnotes on each page of my Word 2019 document without using the Citation function. I have already tried using the "Configure Headings and Footers" module included here: (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/configure-headers-and-footers-for-different-sections-of-a-document-94332643-a6e9-46aa-ab29-064f1d356db6).

However, for a document that already exists with multiple pages, I found it nearly impossible to alter the settings without also requiring to completely rewrite everything from scratch. When we attempted to follow the guidelines in the article above, the system worked as intended. However, this would have to be performed every single time before starting a document and every page would be mandated to be separated by a Page Break. This is not something that I want to do on every page of my research papers.

This is my question: Is there a way to alter the settings so that every page's footnotes can be unique? I am fine with the header being the same, and it is incredibly helpful for the page numbers to change accordingly. Thank you for this function! However, this same feature being locked in place for the Footnotes, I am finding, feels very restrictive.

Thank you for your attention and further assistance with my question.

Answer 1

Footnotes are not in the footer! Ever!
Footers are for content to go on multiple pages.

On the References tab use Insert Footnote.