How can I remove this large gap above my footnotes in MS Word?

In order to get use this answer in Word 2007, you should follow these steps:

First, put the document in "Draft" view.

Second, go to References tab and click the "Show notes" button next to "Insert Footnote"

Third, select "Footnote separator" from the drop-down menu, and you will probably find a paragraph inserted after the line that separates the footnotes from the text (similar to the print-screens above).

This should easily solve the problem, as usually it is not a style problem.

I believe this is what you are facing:

Notice the greyed-out pilcrows.

To fix this, switch to Normal View:

Display the Footnotes Pane:

In the Footnotes Pane, select the Footnote Separator in the dropdown box:

You will see the Footnote Separator line with a number of empty paragraphs, represented by the pilcrows, beneath it.

This time the pilcrows are not greyed-out, which means you can delete the extra space. When you switch back to Print Layout View, you will notice that your problem is solved:

1. Click on the View TAB on the toolbar
2. Click the Draft Button on the toolbar
3. Click on the References TAB on the toolbar
4. Click on Show Notes Option on the toolbar until you see your footnote at the bottom of the screen
5. At the bottom of the screen you will see your footnote and a dropdown box above the footnote
6. Click on the dropdown and select "Footnote separator"
7. You will see a long line and a short line
8. Click on the Page Layout TAB on the toolbar
9. In the "Spacing" block on the toolbar it says "Paragraph" below and there is a little down arrow to the right of the word "Paragraph" Click on this little down arrow to the right of the word Paragraph
10. There is a Paragraph box that appears You will see Auto in the Spacing Before and After fields Click on the up arrow in these fields to change them BOTH to 0 pt

In the Line Spacing section you will see it is set to Double Change this to Single

At the bottom of the popup is a Set As Default button - Click on it Mark the All documents based on the Normal.dotm template option Click OK

11. Go back to the View TAB on the toolbar
12. Click on the Print Layout button on the toolbar

Save

There may be extra lines below your footnote separator.

If you turn on the formatting display (click on the backwards P: ¶ at in the menu bar) you can see straight away of there are extra paragraphs between your footnote and the separator.

If you go to normal view, then to the footnote, then use the drop down to see the footnote separator, you can delete any extra lines.