The References tab is where RixDocs handles the formal apparatus of a document: footnotes and endnotes for asides, citations and an index for sources, and a table of contents that builds itself from your headings. All of it is standard .docx machinery, so the results survive round-trips to Word.
Footnotes and endnotes
A footnote answers a reader's question exactly where it arises; an endnote parks the same material at the back of the document.
- Place the cursor immediately after the word or punctuation the note concerns.
- Open the References tab and click Insert Footnote (or Insert Endnote).
- A superscript number appears in the text; type your note in the area at the foot of the page (or the end of the document for endnotes).
Notes renumber automatically when one is inserted or deleted, so you never maintain the numbers yourself. Mixed usage is common: footnotes for substantive asides, endnotes for a long run of source notes that would otherwise crowd the page bottoms.
Footnote etiquette
- Keep notes to one or two sentences where possible; if a note needs three paragraphs, it is probably body text.
- Put the marker after punctuation in most style conventions.
- Use notes for genuine asides, not for content that belongs in the main flow.
Citations and the index
For source-backed writing, the References tab provides citation insertion: click where the citation belongs, add the citation, and RixDocs numbers it in sequence. Citations accumulate into the bibliography, and the index feature collects terms with the pages they appear on — the standard toolset for reports, theses and manuals.
Keep source details consistent from the start: author, title, year, page. Retrofitting citation formatting across a finished 40-page document is exactly as tedious as it sounds, while doing it right the first time costs nothing.
The table of contents
The TOC is generated from heading styles — one more reason to apply Heading 1 to 3 instead of faking titles with bold text:
- Finish the heading structure first, at least for the sections you have written.
- Place the cursor where the TOC belongs, typically after the cover.
- Open the References tab and choose Table of Contents.
- The TOC builds with section titles and page numbers.
As the document changes, the TOC updates: retitle a section and the entry follows; insert a new chapter and it appears with its page number. A TOC built from fake, hand-bolded titles cannot do any of this — it is the single most common structural mistake in word-processed documents.
Long documents: the full toolkit
For a document of 50+ pages, combine:
- TOC up front for the map.
- Bookmarks and cross-references inside the text for precise pointers — see links, bookmarks and cross-references.
- Headers with PAGE fields so any printed page identifies itself — see headers and page setup.
- Cover pages from the Insert tab for a professional first impression.
Where this content lives in the file
Footnotes, citations, the index and the TOC are all stored in the .docx document model, not as visual approximations. That is why a TOC generated in RixDocs remains a live field in Word, why footnotes renumber there too, and why a PDF export shows the final, correct page numbers throughout.
What to explore next
- Text formatting and styles — the heading styles the TOC is built from.
- Links, bookmarks and cross-references for internal navigation.
- Headers, footers and page setup to complete the formal document frame.