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word inserting figure and table labels in one document

Anonymous
2019-08-13T06:26:30+00:00

Hi, I have a rather large document that includes both tables and figures.  the template I'm using has both a style for table labels, and for figure labels, from an older version of word.  The new word 365 isn't recognising the format of the old template, and doesn't seem to be letting me insert a caption for tables, and a caption for figures in the same document.  I can insert a table label, but when I go to insert a figure label, it changes the table to a figure, then when I fix the table, it converts the figure to a table.  I've followed the online guides but can't get both into the one document

Any help would be appreciated

Thanks

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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  1. Jay Freedman 207.5K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2019-08-13T20:44:55+00:00

    As Stefan says, you can't switch a table caption to a figure caption or vice versa in the Captions dialog. But you can do it simply by editing the existing caption in the text. The only differences between the two types once they've been inserted are the words "Table" and "Figure" at the start, and the identifiers in the SEQ fields that display the numbers.

    So rather than going to the effort of deleting and recreating the captions, just press Alt+F9 to display the field codes, and edit them and the words at the start of the captions. Then press Alt+F9 to return to the field results, and press Ctrl+A followed by F9 to update all the fields.

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  2. Stefan Blom 338.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2019-08-13T10:57:55+00:00

    It isn't obvious if you are referring to caption labels or to specific captions in the document.

    Note that if you are referring to custom caption labels, those can only be saved in the Normal template. You can't save them with another template or with a document. In other words, if you have a new version of Office installed, you may have to recreate your caption labels, unless you backed up your old Normal template. (The Normal template, even in a fresh installation of Word, would always include the predefined Figure, Table, and Equation labels, though.)

    If you are saying that you are trying to replace a specific table caption with a figure caption (or vice versa), you can't do that by selecting a table caption and changing it to a figure captio in the Caption dialog box. If you do that, Word tries to convert all captions of the same type. Instead, what you should do is delete the caption and then insert the one you actually want.

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  3. Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 322.9K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2019-08-13T07:47:19+00:00

    I am not sure about the styles that you say are in the template that you are using, but if you send me a copy of the template, referencing this thread in the covering email message, I will investigate the issue.

    Unless there is something special about the template that you are using, if you want to change the type of caption that you are inserting, you need to select the require label from the Label dropdown in the Caption dialog.

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