Why Figure captions keep multiplying?

Question

I have been working on a document that has strict formatting requirements and I am trying to add table of Figures in the beginning of the main text. I entered the figure captions correctly, but I as make changes and try to update the table, the figures just multiply, as you can see in the screenshot below. How do I fix this?

Answer 1

Yes all the figures are in text boxes, this is because the figures move around a lot while I am making changes, so it is the easiest way to keep the figure and their captions together. There has been a lot of the times when I had lost the caption and then find it in some other chapter just hanging around overlapping with other text.

I have more than 50 figures in the text, so it was easier to keep track of all the figures when using "Insert Caption" function, and adding cross references in the text pointing to that figure.

I figured that would save time. However, when the anchors of two figures overlap, Word gets confused and wrongly, assigns the figure numbers, breaking the correct order. It actually did not save time, because when I double checked, I found lots of mistakes and I ended up just doing everything manually as usual.

And the reason why the list of figures kept multiplying every time I updated was because, it kept copying and pasting the figures and their captions within the textbox. Also, because those duplicates are inside the textbox, they were all completely hidden.

Anyway, here is my solution. Create a new style and apply it to every figure caption. Then in the "Table of Figures" window, go to options, under "Build table of figures from" drop down menu, select that style.

Be cautious, if you mistakenly assign that new style to anything else, it will appear in the List of Figures.

Answer 2

Do you really need the figures to have text wrapping other than "In-line with text"? If not, it is best to insert them in that fashion and then format the paragraph containing the figure so that it is kept together with the next paragraph into which you insert the caption.

Then, everything will stay in the correct order.

Answer 3

Is Track Changes turned on?

If your Captions are in textboxes, it is possible that they end up under the figure they describe.

The procedure to check for that is to Ctrl+Click on the surplus entries in your TOF to go to that caption.

Use the selection Pane to look at objects on the page and find your extra captions and delete them (delete entire text box, not just the words).

Answer 4

I came across this thread

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/list-of-figures-etc-keeps-on-multiplying-and/6fbf6e61-30c8-4f57-9bd1-3f90ea4907ab

that someone else asked the same question 5 years ago, but I could not find a helpful answer there.