Display the dialog box again and you can figure out if this is the case. Meaning, whoever created the footnotes actually inserted the numbers within the Custom Mark field of the Footnote and Endnote dialog box. If you are doing your edits without Track Changes being turned on, then it is possible that your footnotes don't use automatic numbering. When the changes are accepted or rejected, then Word will renumber the footnotes accordingly. Word doesn't renumber the footnotes because the footnote is still there-albeit marked for deletion. In that case, deleting the footnote doesn't actually delete it, but simply marks it as deleted text. When many people edit documents, they do so with Track Changes turned on. The answer could be quite simple, and related to using the Track Changes feature of Word. Roger wonders what could be causing this problem with the footnotes. The footnote was actually deleted, but the remaining footnotes did not renumber. Roger went into the document body, found the footnote marker for the appropriate footnote, and then deleted it.

The document had 90 footnotes in it, and he needed to delete footnote 23. Roger was sent a Word document that he needed to edit.

How to add footnotes in word 365