Inserted footnote given wrong number

Question

I have a Word document with existing text and footnotes.  When I try to insert a footnote in the existing text, it is given the wrong number.  Specifically the insert is between footnotes 3 and 4, and it gives the new footnote number 14.  I should add that it is a multi-section document and this is the second section.  I saw on some other forums that track changes can cause this problem, but track changes is not on, and I hit "accept all changes in document" just to be sure.  How to fix?

Answer 1

By the way, were the notes added in the Custom Mark box (of the Footnote and Endnote dialog box)? With text boundaries displayed, no dotted line surrounds the footnote reference mark, which is what I would expect of custom reference marks. On the other hand, these notes don't quite behave the way I would expect custom notes to do. To me, this suggests possible corruption. What else have you tried, besides saving in HTML format?

Answer 2

Thanks for your reply.  The macro didn't have any effect on footnotes inserted before running it, or on footnotes inserted after running it.  I did find a macro (here) for cutting and reinserting footnotes:

Sub RepairFootnotes()

Dim myFootnote As Footnote

Dim i

For i = ActiveDocument.Footnotes.Count To 1 Step -1

Set myFootnote = ActiveDocument.Footnotes(i)

myFootnote.Range.Copy

myFootnote.Reference.Select

myFootnote.Delete

ActiveDocument.Footnotes.Add Selection.Range

Selection.Footnotes(1).Range.Paste

Next i

End Sub

That helped, but it had odd effects like placing an extra superscript number (not linked to the footnotes) before the actual footnote numbers in the text and in the footnotes. It only did this for some of the footnotes, which is also odd.  I had to manually delete these, which was not pleasant, but at least if fixed the numbering of the linked notes. 

I would still like to get to the bottom of this, if anyone else has ideas.

Answer 3

There seem to be more section breaks in the document than you want. The quickest fix is probably to set the footnotes to restart in all sections at once using a macro.

[Edit: removed irrelevant macro from post]

Answer 4

Thanks for your response. 

No, it was created in Word. 

Since I posted this, I have discovered that it is numbering the new footnotes (only) in section 2 where the footnote numbers for section 1 leave off.  When I turn on the show marks option, it shows that there is an end of section mark at the end of the section 1 like there should be, but then there is a Section Break (Continuous) at the beginning of section 2 (which is not true for other sections in the doc).  I don't know how that got there.  If I delete it then the end of section mark disappears from the end of section 1 and is replaced with a Section Break (Continuous).

Furthermore when I check the footnotes dialog, it says numbering is continuous (which it's not, because the numbering restarts in section 2.  If I change that to "Restart each section" and apply, now the new footnote is numbered 1 instead of 14  :-/

Answer 5

Could this be a document originally created in WordPerfect? In that case, you probably have to recreate the footnotes.