Share via

My Table of Tables and Table of Figures are ruining my document. How do I fix it?

Anonymous
2024-10-09T06:15:08+00:00

I am currently writing my dissertation and am incredibly frustrated with the Auto generation of the Table of Tables and Table of Figures. I have written each chapter in individual Word documents. For each figure and each table, I have been generating a caption and the putting the Chapter number in front of the Table number. For example, if the autogenerated Table number was "Table 4", I would insert something like this "Table 3-4" if it was in Chapter 3. The Table identifier remained "4". Once I generated a Table of Tables, it relabeled all my Table numbers sequentially. For example, instead of Table 1-1, Table 2-1, and Table 2-2 it relabeled them to Table 1-1, 2-2, 2-3. I can understand this issue if it believed that the last number of each Table number should be sequential. I would like to fix this.

Table of Figures: This is beyond the most frustrating. Attached are two images or my issue. When I generate a Table of Figures, it completely messes everything up. The Table of Figures itself includes several Figure Legends from entirely different figures (First Image). On top of that, the Figure Legends below the Figures are automatically edited and the Figure Legends of other Figures are inserted into a single Figure Legend (Second Image). For example, the Figure Legend of Figure 3-4 will be automatically updated to include the Figure Legend from 3-4, 3-5, 3-6...

I apologize if this is confusing. It is difficult to explain through writing.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For education | Windows

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

8 answers

Sort by: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Stefan Blom 338.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2024-10-09T14:32:09+00:00

    Word doesn't give you much control over this. When you create the table of figures, you can clear the option "Include label and number" which means that you will get a list of figures with no label but there will be no numbering either, just the caption text.

    Image

    Alternatively, you can insert each of your captions with just the caption number and your typed text which will then be reflected in the table of figures.

    Image

    None of these options does exactly what you are looking for, though.

    2 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  2. Stefan Blom 338.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2024-10-09T13:28:13+00:00

    If you are using the built-in headings in the document, then you have done a lot of the work already.

    How did you apply numbering to the headings? There is a built-in format which uses "Chapter #" for level 1 / Heading 1 numbering and the other headings are unnumbered. On the Home tab, click Multilevel List (in the Paragraph group) and then click the desired format (which references heading styles). See below.

    Image

    You can customize your list if you click in the first level 1 heading of the document and then click Home tab > Multilevel List > Define New Multilevel List. For more, have a look at https://shaunakelly.com/word/numbering/numbering20072010.html.

    2 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  3. Stefan Blom 338.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2024-10-09T08:04:00+00:00

    For chapter/caption numbering to work properly, you have to choose this format in the Caption Numbering dialog box. You will have to make use of the built-in heading styles for your chapter numbering. The built-in headings must have numbering applied to them.

    On the References tab, click Insert Caption (in the Captions group) and then click Numbering. In the Caption Numbering dialog box, select the option to "Include chapter number" and choose one of the built-in heading styles. Usually you would want to choose "Heading 1."

    Once this is properly set up, you can create a table of figures based on caption labels (maybe this is how you are already doing it).

    2 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  4. Anonymous
    2024-10-09T13:30:55+00:00

    Thank you very much for your help, I was able to find this and apply it. I will come back if I still have issues.

    Thank you again for the help, I really appreciate it.

    0 comments
  5. Anonymous
    2024-10-09T13:14:21+00:00

    Thank you very much for your reply. How do I make built in numbering into the headings? Also, my chapters are currently titled and the titles are in the "Heading 1" format. They also read, "Chapter 1:...." Do I need to rename these to follow the numbering of my headings?

    Thank you very much.

    0 comments