Footnote problem
August 13, 2009 7:56 AM Subscribe
I'm writing in Word for Mac and all of my footnotes have suddenly turned into little boxes. What's going on?
I have solved some footnote issues before by copying everything and then pasting into a blank document. All the copy pasted in fine with restored footnotes.
posted by avex at 8:32 AM on August 13, 2009
posted by avex at 8:32 AM on August 13, 2009
I have solved some footnote issues before by copying everything and then pasting into a blank document.
For the record that's what I was going to advise you to do. Once you realise that this trick works almost every time something in Word goes wrong, you save yourself the cold sweats and the attendant four letter word vocabulary.
posted by ob at 8:53 AM on August 13, 2009
For the record that's what I was going to advise you to do. Once you realise that this trick works almost every time something in Word goes wrong, you save yourself the cold sweats and the attendant four letter word vocabulary.
posted by ob at 8:53 AM on August 13, 2009
This used to happen several times a week at the computer lab I managed. Your choices are to dig in to the Word mark-up codes and fix the syntax or cut/paste to a new document. The second is way easier although you may lose some formatting so be hyper vigilant about going over your document after doing the cut/paste.
A word of advice about Word and large/long documents. The longer the document gets, the more likely Word will get you to a place where it fails epically. Always keep several copies on different media. If you're writing a long documents (say a thesis or dissertation) use separate files for each chapter or section. You can paste them all together at the end of the project. While I was able to save a great many Word docs each semester, there were the one or two that just weren't recoverable. It is an unstable application/file format but it is ubiquitous. Best of all...use something completely text-based like, say, text or HTML. Both are easily imported by Word in the end but are exceptionally stable.
Oh, and when copying your .doc/x file, always be sure to grab the one that isn't prefaced with a tilde. This is a temp/scratch file. Many many many documents have been lost to this incredibly stupid Word tic.
I know this goes beyond what was asked, but when it comes to Word and important documents I feel like I have to overshare. I've seen too much heartbreak to let it go quietly...
posted by Fezboy! at 3:01 PM on August 14, 2009
A word of advice about Word and large/long documents. The longer the document gets, the more likely Word will get you to a place where it fails epically. Always keep several copies on different media. If you're writing a long documents (say a thesis or dissertation) use separate files for each chapter or section. You can paste them all together at the end of the project. While I was able to save a great many Word docs each semester, there were the one or two that just weren't recoverable. It is an unstable application/file format but it is ubiquitous. Best of all...use something completely text-based like, say, text or HTML. Both are easily imported by Word in the end but are exceptionally stable.
Oh, and when copying your .doc/x file, always be sure to grab the one that isn't prefaced with a tilde. This is a temp/scratch file. Many many many documents have been lost to this incredibly stupid Word tic.
I know this goes beyond what was asked, but when it comes to Word and important documents I feel like I have to overshare. I've seen too much heartbreak to let it go quietly...
posted by Fezboy! at 3:01 PM on August 14, 2009
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posted by modernnomad at 8:10 AM on August 13, 2009