How can I remove the space above the footnote separator?

Anonymous
2012-03-10T06:23:19+00:00

I have a long document with many footnotes. On some pages, a large space, sometimes only enough for one double-spaced line, sometimes enough for two, appears above the footnote separator. How can I get rid of this space? I've turned widow-orphan control off, so it shouldn't be related to that. I've looked at the separator under "show notes" in draft view, and it doesn't appear to have any extra spaces associated with it. This actually happens with all of my Word documents.

Thanks for your insight.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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Stefan Blom 352.7K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
2012-03-10T13:52:16+00:00

When viewing the footnote separator (in the footnotes pane), right-click and select Paragraph from the context menu. In the Paragraph dialog box, click the Indents and Spacing tab, and make sure that Spacing Before is set to zero. You may also want to change the Line Spacing to "Single."

Also, to make sure no blank paragraphs is included with the separator, click the ¶ button on the Home tab. Paragraph marks are represented by pilcrows, ¶. Delete any excessive paragraphs if present.

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  1. Jay Freedman 208.3K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2016-07-26T21:22:28+00:00

    What you're showing here isn't related to the footnote. It's caused by having the text box anchored to the first paragraph after the heading.

    In Word, a floating object (text box, graphic, etc.) is required to be on the same page as its anchor point (see "Major Concept #2" in http://wordfaqs.mvps.org/AnchorToHeader.htm). The text box won't fit in the space at the bottom of page 10, so the text box and the paragraph are forced to page 11.

    There are two solutions to this problem:

    • Move the anchor of the text box to the second paragraph after the heading. As much of the first paragraph as will fit in the space will move back to page 10.
    • Right-click in the heading paragraph, click Paragraph, go to the Line and Page Breaks tab of the dialog, and check the box for "Keep with next". That will force the heading to accompany the next paragraph to page 11, but will leave the space at the bottom of page 10.

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-07-26T15:56:24+00:00

    Hi yes, nothing seems to happen. When I open the footnotes window, the page break doesn't have any spaces around it (see picture). I've tried all of these suggestions and nothing is working. I think it might have something to do with a combination of the footnotes and the anchor for the text box on the page below? I have no idea. 

    but this is what it looks like in print view:

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  3. Jay Freedman 208.3K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2016-07-26T01:44:11+00:00

    Have you tried the procedure marked as the Answer by Stefan Blom, and the one from Suzanne S. Barnhill immediately before your post? If so, exactly what happened?

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-07-26T01:18:13+00:00

    I am also having the same issue as @jobbins. Help!

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