Live links for footnotes in Word?

November 29, 2023 9:54 PM

Hi everyone! I was certain there's a way to make a live link from the superscript reference number for a footnote within a paragraph that allows the reader to click and jump to the actual footnote at the bottom of the same page. And yet, I can't seem to figure out how to make that happen. Help?

I've been trying to do this by adding a cross-reference, but I end up with something that looks like this:

Here is my example text 1¹

The double number is no good. I want it to look like this, where the superscript is the live link:

Here is my example text¹

Alternately, when I try to select the superscript directly and add the cross-reference from there, I get a message that says "Error! Bookmark not defined."

Surely there's a way to do this? Ugh, I'm so frustrated! I found a video that shows you how to do this in GoogleDocs but the client's using Word. Thanks for your help!

posted by mochapickle to Technology (3 answers total)

Best answer: Your expected functionality worked for me when I went to References -> Insert Footnote.

(I think Insert -> Cross Reference might be a red herring).
posted by oceano at 11:01 PM on November 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

Best answer: As oceano notes, this is the default behavior of footnote and end notes. You need to double-click the superscripted note id to make the jump - that is different from how normal cross-references work (control-click) so it's not intuitive.

You can add a cross-refence to a foot or endnote, but instead of going to the note itself it links to the first instance of the note id in the body; which is also counter-intuitive (to me anyway).
posted by bunnysquirrel at 11:10 PM on November 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I knew I would find the answers here! So helpful. Thanks so much to you both!
posted by mochapickle at 7:43 AM on November 30, 2023 [1 favorite]