Lost Captions, Out of Sequence Captions, ...
Jim Rodgers
mastered it. I've even written code that "wrote" Word docs
for me into the many hundreds of pages.
But I've never been able to do certain basic things (except
in VBA, sometimes).
One of these is now eating my lunch:
The doc is about 100pp. There are about three dozen
figures, etc. (I caption all of them as "Figure.") These are
the hassles:
1. I will insert a caption below a picture. It vanishes
completely and forever. I never even see it the first time.
However, it continues to increment the sequence number
for the captions. I can't find it. GO TO does not even find
the ones I can see!
2. Sometimes the caption sequence numbers get out of
order. I have some tricks that sometimes work, but these
are stupid ways to use my time. I bet I could write a code
that could author this document, but isn't that even more
ridiculous?!?!?
So, how do I force these captions to renumber in order?
Before you answer, read-on...
3. I've been through [way too much trouble] trying to get
photos, graphs, and tables to go where I want them AND
STAY THERE! As a result, I've resorted to using frames.
Frames, not text boxes. I paste the graphic or whatever
into the frame, and then paste the caption that went with it.
I prefer to generate the caption outside of the frame.
Sometimes, captions are text boxes; sometimes, they are
only text. I have the impression captioning within a frame
generates the latter. I prefer text boxed captions. I seem
not to have the time to conduct scientific experiments as I
am busy throwing dishes and keyboards against the wall!
Without frames, inserted objects (that's what I call them,
God only knows what that term means only to MS Word!)...
objects like pictures will go wild. To help control this
behavior, I select the default layout for inserted objects to
be "In Front of Text." This keeps the picture on the same
page while I caption it, and then I transfer the picture and
caption to the frame I prepared for it.
Of course, I will choose whether to let the frame move with
the text; usually I choose not to. This choice seems to work
better on frames than it does on the objects when inserted
directly into the document without a frame.
I am soooo sick and tired of this. It's been going on since
Windows 3.1! Recently, I rediscovered the MS newsgroups.
So I am coming here to find out, hopefully, I’ve been doing
this wrong since forever. Someone please tell me, after all
these years, what a dummy I am. Please tell me that there
is such a simple way to these things:
1. Make inserted things go and stay where you want them,
2. Make captions so they renumber STRICKTLY in sequence
based on their physical occurrence top-to-bottom and
left-to-right.
Thank you from the bottom of my dark brown coffee cup!
-- Jim Rodgers
========================
Now, Ranting on the Side...
========================
I'm as a big an MS fan as there is. Been using MS products
since I burned the 5k byte MS Basic interpreter into ROM
on my 6502-based Kim-1 with S-100 bus!! I use MS Office
exclusively over competitors, and ALWAYS have. So, I'm
REALLY biting my tongue here about the usability and
quality of design of MS Word.
Is it not true? Is it not true that the objects
and THE FORMATS OF TEXT
all are anchored in the text stream? If you delete just one
character and it's the right (wrong) one, the document will
lose something major like a heading, or formatting for a
whole chapter, or... well, haven't we all been there?
In electrical engineering, we call that "in-band signaling."
It generally recognized as the inferior choice if you have one.
It would be great to know MS understood what a piece of
junk they have here. One beautiful design change could
bring enormous grace to this product.
When I go on major consulting engagements, it is impossible
to get most other consultants to do any major (long) document
in Word; they always prefer FrameMaker®, which I hate. And
I admit that when I am the one who is responsible for the
documentation (sometimes, a thousand pages, outlined!), I go
straight to Visual Basic to write the doc every time. I keep the
text and drawings in an Access database, and the code inserts
and formats everything for me in a few seconds.
However, the automated approach is not practical when
authoring a document from scratch – which is the 99.999%
normal use for this product.
Suzanne S. Barnhill
think:
Probably you know that graphics can be inserted either "In Line with Text"
(in the text layer) or "wrapped" ("floating," in the drawing layer). When
you select an inline graphic and use Insert | Caption (or Insert | Reference
| Caption), you get a caption that is plain text (in the Caption style). If
you select a wrapped graphic, you get a caption that is in a text box. This
is ridiculously short-sighted of Word because text in a text box can't be
"seen" by Word for purposes of creating cross-references or generating a
Table of Figures. (And of course even you can see it only in Print Layout
view, not in Normal view.)
The solution to these problems is:
1. Always insert graphics inline whenever possible; format the paragraph the
graphic is in (or the caption, whichever comes first) as "Keep with next."
Sometimes it works well to insert the graphic and its caption together in a
borderless table cell.
2. If you need text to wrap around your graphic, select both the inline
graphic and its plain-text caption and insert both in a frame, then wrap the
text around the frame. You don't have as many wrapping choices as with a
text box, but it's unlikely you're going to want your figure to be in front
of or behind text, so the basic "square" wrapping should suffice.
3. If you do put the graphic+caption in a frame, be aware that it is
anchored to a text paragraph. Normally this will be the paragraph that
precedes or follows it. You can move the anchor to another paragraph, and
you can lock it to a specific paragraph. You can define the location of the
graphic relative to the page rather than to the text it's anchored to. What
you *can't* do is anchor it to a specific page: it will always appear on the
same page as the text paragraph to which it's anchored.
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
"Jim Rodgers" <JimRo...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:946F6D32-680E-40A3...@microsoft.com...
Jim Rodgers
Your point #3 was helpful. Thanks.
Let me ask a more basic question to see if I can improve my conceptual model
of the problem.
If all my captions are in the main document text, then I know I can show the
fields and toggle back and forth globally. Is there a way to update ALL
fields in the [main] document globally? What about only the {SEQ} fields?
What about the named fields {Seq Figure ...}?
Thanks.
-- Jim Rodgers
Jim Rodgers
Maybe thet are set Visible=False. I dunno. I just can't see them anywhere.
So I go from "Figure 7." to "Figure 10." for no reason. Except that
Iremember trying to insert those captions. Twice I tried to caption beneath
a Figure that already was at the bottom of the page. Then, the captios went
to Michael Jackson's house, and I never saw them again.
I can't figure out the Object Model collection for these captions, or else I
would fix this in VBA.
Any help here?
-- Jim
Suzanne S. Barnhill
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
"Jim Rodgers" <JimRo...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:9D0BB6B0-4A56-43CF...@microsoft.com...
Suzanne S. Barnhill
until you have accepted all the changes. I can't help with VBA aspects since
I'm not a coder, but you might try asking in one of the word.vba. hierarchy
of NGs (such as the one designated as "Programming" in this Communities
interface).
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
"Jim Rodgers" <JimRo...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:4EBED02B-E91D-4803...@microsoft.com...
Jim Rodgers
The Update method does not seem to work on fields
embedded into frames. I have some which are
inside text boxes which are then in frames as well.
I can fix these manually for now. My REAL PROBLEM
is I still have one caption inside a textbox, and it is
"lost" somewhere in the document.
Another MS Word feature!
The text box may become visible or maybe even
deleted if I cut several pages of text, then paste
it into notepad to scrub it, and then copy and
paste it back into MS Word.
In fact, let me try that right now...
.... IT WORKED! *************
I had to do it twice before I cut and scrubbed enough
text to accidentally on-purpose delete the phantom
caption. And I never saw it in the process. But, it's
gone finally.
*** More ***
So here's what I am doing now. Id anyone has
a better way (not including ditching MS Word),
then please explain it to me.
1. Open a blank sheet (new document) in Word.
2. Insert an embedded object or paste a copied
object onto he blank page.
3. Format the Object (or whatever it is) using
In Front of Text, Move with Text, Lock Anchor.
4. Select the object, go to the Insert Menu, and
create a caption as required. This will create
a textbox with a caption in it.
5. Format the caption textbox (right-click) and
set it the same as you did the other object.
6. Back in the original document, insert a FRAME
(not a textbox). Format the frame (different
dialog box than the textboxes) for text wrap
around, and set the distance from text=0.
7. Do not remove the border from the Frame yet.
8. Return to the "new doc" and select the object
and the caption textbox together and right-
click / copy.
9. Go back to the original doc and place the
cursor in the Frame. Now do a Paste.
Pasted items will NOT appear in Frame
except by coincidence.
10. While the object and caption are still both
selected, drag them into the Frame and
align the top left corner. Leave about 0.1
to 0.2" margin between the objects and
the Frame at the top left.
11. Now drag the bottom right corner of the
Frame until it has the same margin as the
top left do.
12. With the cursor, select the number field
in the caption, then right click it, then
choose Update Field in the Rclick menu.
THAT's IT.
Once you are 100% satisfied (which should
be after you have completely written and
proofed the whole document), then you may
reformat the Frame so it has no border with
right click / borders, etc.
Also, this might be when you delete without
saving the new doc / blank pages where you
built the objects and captions and copied them
to the Frames.
===========
In my experience, you must update the Figure
numbers manually, and the GOTO method in the
Edit menu will not find these Fields.
Also, one must take great care in pasting order.
...and where one pastes. These details will
determine the sequence order of the caption
numbers.
Suzanne S. Barnhill
or for any other purpose) and (2) you cannot insert a text box in a frame.
What you have done is to anchor the text box to the paragraph in the frame
and superimpose it over the frame. If you want to use a frame, just put
plain text in it.
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
"Jim Rodgers" <JimRo...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:A9951280-E141-4D85...@microsoft.com...