4 Ways to Quickly Delete All Footnotes or Endnotes in Your Word Document

In this article, there are 4 ways for you to quickly delete all footnotes or endnotes you have in Word document

In large, endnotes and footnotes are texts in document where explanations and comments go. Yet, sometimes when you inherit a document from others, this kind of information can be useless to you. Therefore, you will have to remove them. Without deleting then one by one, here are 4 quick ways which enable you to clear them once for all.

Method 1: Use the “Styles” Window

1. First off, click “Home” tab.
2. Then click the down arrow button in “Styles” group.
3. Next in “Styles” window open, find and place your cursor on “Footnote Reference” or “Endnote Reference”.
4. And click the upside-down triangle button.
5. Now on the drop-down menu, click “Select All XX Instance(s)”. The “XX” here refers to the number of the footnotes or endnotes you have. Now all footnotes or endnotes are selected.
6. Finally press “Delete” and all of them are gone in a second.

Sometimes in step 2, however, you may fail to find either “Footnote Reference” or “Endnote Reference”. Here are steps you can take:

1. Firstly, click the “Options” on the right-down side of the “Styles” window.
2. Next in “Style Pane Options” dialog box, choose “All styles” for “Select styles to show”.
3. Then click “OK”.
4. And now you can find both “Footnote Reference” and “Endnote Reference”.
5. Repeat step 4 above.
6. Lastly click “Select All” and you can see they are in selection now.

Method 2: Use “Find and Replace” Function

1. At first, click “Home” table, too.
2. Then this time in “Editing” group, choose “Replace”.
3. Next in “Find and Replace” dialog box, place cursor at the text box of “Find what”.
4. And click “More” button to expand more options.
5. Then click “Special” at the bottom.
6. Next choose “Endnote Mark” or “Footnote Mark”.
7. If you choose “Endnote Mark”, in the “Find what” text box, you will see “^e”. If you select “Footnote Mark”, you are likely to see “^f”.
8. Now keep the “Replace with” text box empty.
9. Lastly, click “Replace All” to delete then all. Or click “Replace” to navigate through them one by one and decide whether to delete or not.

Here you have to understand if some of the footnotes or endnotes contain custom marks, they cannot be cleared, such as below:

Method 3: Record Macro

For example, if we want to get rid of all footnotes, we can record a macro for method 2 and we will get codes in return. And then you can choose to either assign a button or keyboard for the macro to use it later. As for how to record a macro, please refer to this article: How to Remove the Formatting of Pasted Texts with Macro and VBA in Your Word

The following codes are used to delete footnotes:

Sub DeleteFootnotes()
  Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
  Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
  With Selection.Find
    .Text = "^f"
    .Replacement.Text = ""
    .Forward = True
    .Wrap = wdFindContinue
    .Format = False
    .MatchCase = False
    .MatchWholeWord = False
    .MatchWildcards = False
    .MatchSoundsLike = False
    .MatchAllWordForms = False
  End With
    Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End Sub

By the way, to delete endnotes, you just need to change “^f” to “^e” in the code line of “.Text = “^f””.

Method 4: Use VBA Codes

If you prefer an even faster way, macro can help. As shown in method 2, some of the customized endnote or footnote mark can’t be eliminated. But with the assistance of macro, it can be handled easily.

1. To start with, press “Alt+ F11” to open the VBA editor.
2. Next click “Insert” to insert a new “Module”.
3. Then double click to open the module. Now if you want to delete all endnotes, paste the following codes:

Sub DeleteAllEndnotes()
  Dim objEndnote As Endnote

  For Each objEndnote In ActiveDocument.Endnotes
    objEndnote.Delete
  Next
End Sub

And to delete all footnotes, paste these codes instead:

Sub DeleteAllfootnotes()
  Dim objFootnote As Footnote

  For Each objFootnote In ActiveDocument.Footnotes
    objFootnote.Delete
  Next
End Sub

4. Lastly, click “Run”.

Comparison of 4 Methods

Fix Damaged Files

Generally, with so many features, we can achieve a lot in Word. Yet, it can be susceptible to errors and corruptions, leaving corrupted Word files behind. Therefore, at this time, you certainly will have to get a Word error fix tool to help yourself retrieve the valuable data.

Author Introduction:

Vera Chen is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including Excel file problem recovery tool and pdf repair software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com