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Figure Captioning and Heading levels in Word 2016

Anonymous
2019-06-12T08:54:34+00:00

Hello,

Apologies if this has been dealt with previously but I have searched and couldn't find a solution that was working.

I am working on a document (PhD thesis) which has several chapters (and within each chapter is several levels of subheading). There are many tables and figure in each chapter so I've set them up to be numbered sequentially within a single chapter but to incorporate the chapter number (with chapters designated as Heading 1), e.g., Figure 1.1 or 3.4, etc. It was all working perfectly.

Then I decided to insert a couple more pictures into chapter 1 and the figure/table captions have gone awry. They are in chapter 1 but think they're in chapter 2. So the caption becomes 2.1 when it should be 1.2. Everything that already there remains the same. And if I insert new figures anywhere else the labelling works correctly in chapters 2-7. It's just chapter 1 that doesn't seem to exist. It just starts at 2. Even though the chapter title 'Chapter 1: Introduction' is still there and is linked to the ToC.

Also (I don't know if this is relevant), I am using a custom ToC which shows 6 reference levels. All works well. Until I close and then reopen the document. When I do this, the ToC and text in the document all still work fine (and when I do Alt+F9 on the ToC it confirms it is displaying 6 levels {TOC\o "1-6"\h\z\u}) but in the reference table, if I want to add new text it reverts to showing only 3 levels. I have to replace the ToC every time I open the document in order to insert new levels beyond level 3.

I can't figure it out and would be extremely grateful if someone has any advice or has encountered it before. My guess is its obvious but I've never done this before.

Cheers

Neil

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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  1. Stefan Blom 342.3K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2019-06-13T12:50:28+00:00

    My experience is the same as Suzanne's:  The Add Text button can't be modified. Applying heading styles explicitly is preferable.

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  2. Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 323.1K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2019-06-12T23:38:51+00:00

    Re the Pictures, are the captions inserted inside text boxes which have the layout properties set to something other than in-line with text.  If they are, the caption numbering will be based on the location of the anchor for the text box and it is possible that it is located in the second chapter of the document.

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-06-13T09:32:15+00:00

    Apologies, that was a typo. I was using the Reference tab in the Ribbon. On the left hand side you can 'Add text' of different levels. The default is that only levels 1, 2 and 3 are available to add to document. So, when I made a custom ToC I set the levels to 6 and in that menu I could add 6 levels. But when I closed and reopened the document it would revert to only giving me the option of adding levels 1, 2 or 3.

    I know I can just type text in the document and add later format it to heading levels from the Home ribbon so it's not a big deal. But, I wondered if this quirk had something to do with the formatting issues for figures, or if the problems may have had the same root.

    All the codes were completely fine to my eyes. It's a mystery but thankfully solved, for now.

    Thanks for the recommendation. I'm very much still figuring out what I'm doing.

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  4. Anonymous
    2019-06-13T09:27:44+00:00

    Thank you both for your replies. Happily, I have - after a long time of scratching my head - solved the problem. The concerning news is that I still don't understand what the problem is, I've just managed to make it go away.

    In case somebody as clueless as me is reading this in the future and having a similar issue... In the end I just removed the style formatting for my title of chapter 1 and deleted the text entirely. I typed it out again and reset it to Heading level 1 and updated the ToC. When I went to insert a caption on the images it recognised chapter 1 existed again. All the formatting seemed to be working properly but for some reason Word just wasn't recognising there was a Chapter 1 when it came to inserting captions. Undoubtedly there was a reason for this but I couldn't find it.

    A lot of lost hours to arrive at a remarkably simple solution!

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  5. Suzanne S Barnhill 278K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2019-06-12T13:16:08+00:00

    Let's start with the TOC issues. You say, "in the reference table, if I want to add new text it reverts to showing only 3 levels." What do you mean by "reference table"? And how are you adding new text? The way to add entries to a TOC (or Table of Figures, List of Tables, etc.) is to add headings or captions to the document body then use F9 to update the TOC/TOF. Is that what you're doing?

    As for the captions, if you press Alt+F9 to display field codes, how do the incorrect captions compare to the correct ones?

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