How To Delete All Footnotes in Microsoft Word

Footnotes can be useful for providing additional information and citations in a document. However, you may want to remove all footnotes at some point, whether you are finishing up a document or inherited one with unnecessary footnotes. Fortunately, Word provides several straightforward methods to delete all footnotes.

Use Find and Replace

The fastest way to delete all footnotes is using the Find and Replace tool:

1. Press Ctrl + H to open the Find and Replace dialog box
2. Click the Replace tab
3. In the Find what box, type ^f (this is the code for footnote mark)
4. Leave the Replace with box empty
5. Click Replace All

This will remove every footnote mark, automatically deleting the associated footnotes.

Delete with a Macro

You can automate deleting footnotes using a macro. Here are the steps:

1. Press Alt + F11 to open the Visual Basic Editor
2. Insert a module
3. Paste this VBA code:

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

4. Run the macro using F5

This macro removes all footnote marks, deleting the footnotes. You can assign the macro to a button to quickly use it again later.

Remove in Draft View

1. Click the View tab
2. Click Draft
3. Click References > Show Notes
4. In the footnote pane, click the dropdown and select Footnote Separator
5. Delete the line

This removes the footnote section separator line. Without it, Word won’t display the footnotes.

Delete with VBA Code

For more control, you can use VBA code to target and delete specific footnotes instead of all at once:

Dim footnoteNum As Long
footnoteNum = ActiveDocument.Footnotes.Count
If footnoteNum > 0 Then
    For i = footnoteNum To 1 Step -1
        ActiveDocument.Footnotes(i).Range.Delete
    Next
End If

This loops through all footnotes and deletes them one by one from the last to the first.

Tips

• Use Ctrl + Click on a footnote mark to quickly jump to the footnote text.
• If you delete the footnote text itself instead of the mark, Word will renumber all remaining footnotes.
• You can convert footnotes to endnotes by right clicking the footnote text and selecting Convert to Endnote

Deleting all footnotes in Word is simple once you know these methods. Automate the process with a macro to remove footnotes in just a click whenever needed.