There are times, in the course of word processing, when one and the same footnote must be referenced from several places in the text. The quick and easy solution is to insert a new footnote into the document and then copy the text from the previous footnote into the new footnote. I personally think having two or more identically worded footnotes in a document is ugly (especially if multiple references appear on the same page), but this approach gets the job done.

There is, however, a way to refer to the same footnote from several points in the document text. I think it's more elegant than simply repeating the same footnote in the text.

To do this, enter the first occurrence of the footnote in the usual manner. Then, at any point where you want to refer to the same footnote:

1. Select the References tab and then Cross-reference under Captions.
2. In the Reference type list box, select Footnote.
3. In the For which footnote list box, select the footnote you want to refer to. The diagram below shows the appropriate part of the ribbon and the dialog box.
4. Click on the Insert button, and then on the Close button. You will see a footnote number at the insertion point, but it will be formatted as regular text.
5. To fix that, use your favorite method to highlight just the newly inserted footnote number.
6. Type Shift + F9. The number will turn into a Word field, for example

   { NOTEREF _Ref413254028 \h }

   (Note: When you do this, the string of digits following _Ref will almost certainly be something other that what is shown above.)

7. Between the \h and the closing curly bracket, insert \f. The text of the field should now look like

   { NOTEREF _Ref413254028 \h \f }

8. Type Shift + F9 again. The field text will disappear, and the new footnote will be superscripted.

One extra tip: Before finalizing or performing QC on any document that contains fields, it's an excellent idea to type Ctrl + A (which selects all text) and then F9 (which updates all fields).