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Footnotes and endnotes in Word: what the notes keep, and the notes a deleted reference leaves in the file

Last updated: 28 October 2026

This page is about the notes themselves. Tracked changes in general are in what remains after Accept All; comments in comments, ink and annotations; cross-references to notes and the bookmarks they use in bookmarks and cross-references; and what a PDF made from the document keeps in metadata when exporting to PDF.

Where the notes are kept

Microsoft's page Add footnotes and endnotes says: "Usually, footnotes appear at the bottom of the page, while endnotes come at the end of the document or section." Each one is tied to a mark in the text; Microsoft's training page Insert footnotes and endnotes in Word says: "A number or symbol on the footnote or endnote matches up with a reference mark in the document."

In the file, the notes are not in the body. The standard quoted in Microsoft's Open XML documentation describes the root of the footnotes part as "the set of all footnotes in the document, including footnote separators and continuation notices" (Footnotes, ISO/IEC 29500-1, 1st edition), and says of each note that it "can contain any block-level content" (footnote). Endnotes have a part of their own in the same way. So a note can hold paragraphs and tables, and in them what a paragraph of the body can hold, such as a tracked insertion or deletion with its author's name, the anchor of a comment, text formatted as hidden, a field or a picture. (A note cannot hold another note's reference mark: the standard says a document with one inside a note "shall be considered non-conformant", footnoteReference.)

Notes are easy to leave out of a last read. Footnotes are in small type at the foot of each page, endnotes are after the last paragraph or at the end of each section, and the text that a reference mark points at is not next to it.

Tracked changes and comments in notes

Microsoft's page Track changes in Word describes the markup views. "No Markup hides the markup to show the document with changes incorporated", and of the Original view it says "any tracked changes or comments in the document that have not been accepted, rejected, or deleted remain in the document." So a note that looks finished with the markup hidden can still hold an earlier wording and the name of the person who changed it, until each change is accepted or rejected. The standard's example of a tracked deletion shows what is saved with one: <w:del w:id="0" w:author="Joe Smith" w:date="2006-03-31T12:50:00Z">, content "treated as deleted content which has been tracked as a revision" (del). The same applies inside a note.

In the file, a comment on the text of a note is stored with the other comments, and the marks that tie it to its text are in the note. Remove it as you would any comment; the comments page linked above has the steps.

A deleted note can still be in the file

Microsoft's page Delete a footnote, endnote, or separator says: "It's the reference number or mark that you delete (in the body of the text), NOT the footnote or endnote itself." To remove a footnote, "In the document body, find the footnote reference mark (the superscript number or letter). Select that reference mark. Press Delete."

With Track Changes on, deleting the mark is a tracked deletion like any other: the standard describes deleted content as "tracked as a revision", kept in the file until the change is accepted or rejected. While the deletion of the mark is not accepted, the mark is still in the body and the note it points at is still in the notes part, whether or not the note's own text is also shown as deleted. A note taken out during review because it named a source, a client or an internal document can therefore travel with the file, under the reviewer's name. Accept or reject every change, in the notes as well as the body, before you send the file.

The page also gives a way to remove every footnote or endnote at once: open the Replace tab, "In the Find what box, enter either ^f for footnote or ^e for endnote", leave the Replace with box blank and select Replace All. Do it on a copy, and look at the result.

Separators and the other entries in the notes parts

The footnotes part also holds the entries Word uses to lay the notes out, each stored as a note of its own with a type. The standard's example shows a separator and a continuationSeparator before the first ordinary note, and Microsoft's list of note types adds continuationNotice, "Continuation Notice Separator" (FootnoteEndnoteValues). They usually hold a line and nothing else, but they can be edited. The Delete page reaches them in Draft view: "Double-click any footnote or endnote in the body of your text. The Footnotes pane appears at the bottom of your document", and "click Footnote Separator in the Footnotes list". Look at each entry that list offers, in a document that came from someone else or from a template.

Where each one is in the file

Check the notes in Word

1. Work on a copy. On the Review tab, choose All Markup, so that tracked changes and comments in the notes show.
2. Go to the notes: the footnotes at the bottom of each page, and the endnotes at the end of the document or at the end of each section. Read every note.
3. Accept or reject every tracked change. The Track changes page says "Deletions are marked with a strikethrough", so a note whose reference mark was deleted with Track Changes on shows a struck-through mark in the body; accepting that deletion finishes deleting the note.
4. Delete the comments you do not mean to send, including those on the text of a note.
5. Look for hidden text. Microsoft's page Remove hidden data and personal information by inspecting documents says: "If you do not know whether your document contains hidden text, you can use the Document Inspector to search for it." Run it on the copy: File › Info › Check for Issues › Inspect Document.
6. In Draft view, open the Footnotes pane as the Delete page describes and look at the separator entries in the Footnotes list.

Check a copy of the file

1. Make a copy, rename it to .zip and unzip it.
2. Open word/_rels/document.xml.rels to find the footnotes and endnotes parts, then read each of them.
3. In those parts, search for w:del, w:ins, w:author, w:commentReference and w:vanish.
4. In word/document.xml, list the w:id of every w:footnoteReference and w:endnoteReference. A note whose id appears only inside a w:del, or not at all, is not one a reader of the finished document would see; nor is one whose reference is inside a w:ins that will be rejected, or in a run formatted as hidden (w:vanish).
5. Read the notes that have a w:type other than normal.
6. Finding nothing this way shows only that these searches found nothing, not that the file holds nothing else.

What ScrubDrop does

ScrubDrop reads the file in your browser; it is not uploaded. It treats footnotes and endnotes as content: they are not a category of their own, are not listed, and are kept. What is inside them is handled as it is in the body. For free, one file at a time, it lists the kinds of hidden data it supports, removes the document properties and the comments, those on notes included, and accepts tracked changes, in the notes as well as the body; the list shows each change with its author. Hidden text in a note is listed with the rest of the hidden text, and ScrubDrop Pro removes it.

A note whose reference mark goes, because a tracked deletion of the mark is accepted or, in ScrubDrop Pro, a tracked insertion of it is rejected, is not written to the copy. Nor is an ordinary note that no reference mark in the document points at. Those notes are not listed separately. The separator and continuation entries are kept and are not listed, so read them in Word. If a reference mark is itself hidden text, ScrubDrop lists "a footnote or endnote referenced from hidden text", and when ScrubDrop Pro is asked to remove hidden text it writes no file and says "Show that text or delete the note in Word first, or untick hidden content." The result is read again with separate parsers, and a file that does not pass is not offered.

Questions

Sources: the Microsoft pages linked on this page were checked on 28 October 2026. ScrubDrop is not affiliated with Microsoft.