How to get rid of mysterious line

[pasdetrois]

I've taken over writing a manual from a writer that was fired, so I cannot
ask her about this. On only one page of the document (Word 2003), there is a
thin line about 1.5 inches long near the bottom of the page, above the
footer. It is visible when I go into header/footer and select "hide document
text," but it does not appear to be in the footer itself. Actually I created
new headers and footers. I tried looking in borders, wordart, autotext, and
also trying to put my cursor on it and delete it or see if it was an applied
style. No luck; I can't "land" the cursor on it. I was able to remove a big
ol' "draft" watermark. I've also tried to figure out if it had something to
do with my sections, but it appears on only one page within a particular
section.

How do I get rid of this line?

 

[Mary Sauer]

http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/CantGetRidOfLine.htm

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Sounds like the Footnote Separator. At a guess, the writer attempted to
delete a footnote but didn't actually get rid of all of it.

 

[pasdetrois]

Suzanne, it was indeed a footnote separator. I went into Normal mode, then
View, then Footnotes, then Footnote Separator, and then Delete.

Thanks very much!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Well, this is not really what you want to do, because now you have no
footnote separator if you ever do have any footnotes. What you should be
doing instead is figuring out why Word is displaying a footnote separator
(which would indicate the presence of a footnote). With nonprinting
characters displayed, you should be able to tell whether there is an empty
paragraph in the footnote pane or something else that would make Word think
there is a footnote on that page.

 

[pasdetrois]

I don't ever use footnotes, but I appreciate your feedback. Apparently the
former writer did indeed create this one footnote, was told to remove it, and
did not remove the separator.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

To clarify, the separator appears only when there is a footnote. So the
former writer was told to remove the footnote and did not (completely)
remove the footnote; otherwise you would never have seen the separator. Even
without the separator, if Word thinks there is a footnote in the document,
it may be reserving space for one at the bottom of the page.

 

[pasdetrois]

Understand now, thanks again!

 

[Si]

I have a line above the footnote. How to remove the line and free up the
space above the footnote? Please advise. thanks

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP on news.microsoft.com]

Switch to Draft View and then on Insert Footnote and in the top border of
the footnotes pane, select footnote separator from the dropdown control.
Then you can edit it as you wish.

--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP, originally posted via msnews.microsoft.com

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

See http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/NoteSeparators.htm

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org