Here is link to original post on Adobe Forum:

Footnotes: how can I manage (add and link) missing reference number to already existing footnote?

In short – after importing WORD document – one of the Footnotes misbehaved – marker was in the text – but contents shifted to the next one – deleting and inserting a new marker won’t help – as contents is in the next Footnote…

Let’s say you have situation like this:

3rd Footnote is blank – but its contents has shifted to the next one – 4th.

Manually, moving next to previous – would be quite tedious – especially, if you’ve 100s to move…

That’s where ID-Tasker comes to the rescue.

First, you’ll need to use LOAD TASKS button:

to load Tasks:

First Task – please double-click on its title to open it:

Will switch to the TEXTS list, then Clear any previous contents – just in case, then will load Footnotes info – from the selected text, then mark all loaded rows as selected.

But before you run this Task – you’ll have to SELECT text that you want to process – by putting text cursor just before the first / bad Footnote and then press Ctrl+Shift+End – to extend selection to the end of the Story.

Unless you want to process only some range of Footnotes – then you’ll have to select only part of the text with those Footntoes. That’s the beauty for the IDT – the same Task can work on a whole Document – or just a Selection.

Like this:

Now, let’s run our first Task – on this selected text:

And the result will be:

As you can see – only information about 3rd to 7th Footnotes has been loaded.

You could load information about all Footnotes from the whole Story – but then you would’ve to filter out the good ones before the bad one – so a few extra unnecessary steps.

Before you continue – please UNSELECT first / “bad one” Footnote:

Now, you need to either Double Click or click and drag on the right edge of the TYPE column:

Now, you can open 2nd Task – double-click on its title:

But before you run it – please double-click on the first Footnote on the list in the Type column – the “bad one” – IDT will automatically sellect corresponding marker of this Footnote.:

Now, please run this Task – once:

This one liner selects “starting point” – first Footnote that will be replaced with contents of the next Footnote.

Now, you can open 3rd Task – double-click on its title:

And now you can run the main part of the show – 3rd Task in BatchMode:

After a while – you’ll end up with something like this:

You just need to switch to InDesign and delete last Footnote marker:

That’s all.

EXACTLY the same steps can be done if you need to FORWARD Footnotes – just add an empty Footnote AT THE END of the Story, unselect it on the list in ID-Tasker, double click on it, then run 2nd Task, then run 3rd Task – but this time using BatchMode in reverse button: