One of the good features of both packages is the automatic re-numbering of notes upon insertion or deletion. As well, both WP and MS Word allow the user to specify one of a number of styles for the notes. However, WP seems to have greater flexibility in allowing the user to select a note style. In this application, the user can specifically design the style of the notes using the Style Editor , whereas in MS Word, the user can only select from a number of predefined styles.
Even so, in testing the Footnote/Endnote options, WP proved to be much more difficult to use. For example, in WP the default style for both endnotes and footnotes was superscript. Since endnotes and footnotes are different types of annotations, their numbering is independent of one another, therefore if a user has both footnotes and endnotes in a WP document then the references to these notes in the text can be confusing if both the default superscript number notations are used. Because of this, an effort was made during testing to change one of the note styles (eg. subscript). However, this was very difficult to do intuitively, and even worse, after an undesirable change was made, it was impossible to easily reverse the change. Furthermore, WP does not have a "default" button to set the note style back to the original default style! Having a default button to set the notes back to the default style would be an excellent feature for WP. Like WP, MS Word also lacks a "default" button, but it is unnecessary in this case since it only has predefined styles.
In addition, MS Word also has different default styles for Endnotes versus Footnotes. Thus if the user has both endnotes and footnotes in a MS Word document, the user does not necessarily have to change one of the note styles.
As a side note, one additional feature MS Word provides is conversion of endnotes to footnotes and vice versa.