Modify alphabetic caption numbering

Question

Hi,

I've set up a Caption in Word 2003 with the numbering format as capital alphabetic, so I can insert Cross-references A, B, C etc into my document. But I noticed that it continues after Z as AA, BB, CC etc. How can this be changed to give Captions AA, AB, AC etc instead?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Hi wybrow

I'm afraid it's not possible to change the automatic captioning to do this.

The only thing I can imagine would be to switch to a set of user-defined SEQ fields.

Word itself uses SEQ fields, like this, for example:

{SEQ Abbildung \* ARABIC }

You can see these if you press Alt+F9 to toggle on the field code display.

Switches can be added to SEQ fields, so after "Z" you can restart the first field at "A" and add a second field (which will need a different label) to display the running "A,B,C" for the next level. So:

{ SEQ FigI \* ROMAN } Up to Z, then...

{ SEQ FigI \r 1 \* ROMAN }{ SEQ FigII \* ROMAN } For AA

{ SEQ FigI \r 1 \* ROMAN }{ SEQ FigII \* ROMAN } For AB, etc.

Only problem is that if you're generating a Table of Figures (or whatever) it's going to stop showing the values correctly after "Z" (it will then repeat "A" to the end). So you'd have to unlink it and complete the TOF manually.

---

Cindy Meister, VSTO/Word MVP

Answer 2

See if this helps.. I'm not a techie though..

http://www.textndata.com/forums/creating-numbering-sequence-aa-ab-450776.html