Aligning figures to bottom of page, WITH working bookmarks

[me13013]

I have a Word document (a thesis for school), with about 20 figures
and tables among 80 pages. I would like the figures/'tables, with
their captions, to align to the bottom of the nearest page to where
they are referenced from (actually, I will gladly settle for aligning
to the bottom of *any* page; doesn't have to be the nearest).
Further, each of my captions includes a named bookmark which covers
the text of the figure number. I then insert a cross-refence to the
bookmark's text when I want to reference the figure from several
places in the document, and to the page of the bookmark's text to
create an entry in my table of figures.

I have found one method for aligning figure+caption but this method
deletes my bookmark. The method is as follows. (1) I select the
figure and text, (2) insert text box, and (3) edit the properties of
the text box so that it binds to the bottom of a page. This method
works great with one HUGE (and confounding) exception. The bookmark
that is inside the text box is gone. It no longer appears in any list
of bookmarks, and any cross references to it says something like
"reference to non-existent bookmark" (well, it says that once I update
fields, which I will need to do eventually, so this is an untenable
"solution").

At present it seems my best option is essentially to align the text by
hand (the document is 'finished', in that I don't need to make any
more text changes to it). This is exceedingly tedious and then I also
have problems with getting Word to properly justify text in the
paragraphs that I have to split to stick the figures in the right
place. I am using left and right justify, and when I split a
paragraph I need the bottom line of the top half to justify right and
left, but I can't see any way to convince Word to do that either
(other than to manually insert a bunch of spaces).

Anyone know of another way to do this? Surely this isn't an unusual
use/need/desire. Surely Word must have a way to do this.

Bob H

 

[Robert M. Franz (RMF)]

Hello Bob

I have a Word document (a thesis for school), with about 20 figures
and tables among 80 pages. I would like the figures/'tables, with
their captions, to align to the bottom of the nearest page to where
they are referenced from (actually, I will gladly settle for aligning
to the bottom of *any* page; doesn't have to be the nearest).
Further, each of my captions includes a named bookmark which covers
the text of the figure number. I then insert a cross-refence to the
bookmark's text when I want to reference the figure from several
places in the document, and to the page of the bookmark's text to
create an entry in my table of figures.

It's always good to mention the version of Word you're using: some
people might want to test and then it's not much use w/o the version in
general; and in particular, things might indeed have changed in how Word
treats captions/bookmarks outside of the body text layer or not, IIRC.

I'm not entirely sure why you're using a (custom?) bookmark at all,
since you can cross reference to captions automatically.

I have found one method for aligning figure+caption but this method
deletes my bookmark. The method is as follows. (1) I select the
figure and text, (2) insert text box, and (3) edit the properties of
the text box so that it binds to the bottom of a page. This method
works great with one HUGE (and confounding) exception. The bookmark
that is inside the text box is gone. It no longer appears in any list
of bookmarks, and any cross references to it says something like
"reference to non-existent bookmark" (well, it says that once I update
fields, which I will need to do eventually, so this is an untenable
"solution").

In long documents, as a rule of thumb, you want your pictures as inline
objects. Spares you a lot of grief. Makes your documents a tad bit less
"sexy" (no text flowing around your objects), but still ...

If you do that (read: your picture is set to "inline with text", place
it in its own paragraph, and the caption below it), then the manual way
of aligning the figures is by using paragraph formatting to the picture
paragraph: Spacing before x pt. Not much use per se, because instead of
a large gap at the bottom of the page, you get it above the figure ...

At present it seems my best option is essentially to align the text by
hand (the document is 'finished', in that I don't need to make any
more text changes to it). This is exceedingly tedious and then I also
have problems with getting Word to properly justify text in the
paragraphs that I have to split to stick the figures in the right
place. I am using left and right justify, and when I split a
paragraph I need the bottom line of the top half to justify right and
left, but I can't see any way to convince Word to do that either
(other than to manually insert a bunch of spaces).

Adding spaces – behold!

If you really need floating objects (Shapes in Word lingo), then there's
no way around it: you paginate the document once only (in the end).

How wide are your figures? As wide as the normal paragraph width? I
couldn't see how they would affect justification then (because you would
not get thinner paragraphs).

2cents
Robert

 

[Henk57]

Bob:
Frankly, I think you make things far too complicated and that all
because you want yr tables and figures at the bottom of a page. If
it's only for the looks of yr document I would suggest to abandon this
path.
Your List of Figs and List of tables can be generated by the captions,
so why you complicate things by adding bookmarks? Also xrefs can refer
to captions (texts and/or ID number, and/or page number for that
matter).
If a picture doesnt fit it will automatically be displayed on the next
page with an "ugly" white space on the previous page. You can
rearrange yr text in the end (you said you are ready, so this can be
done), or resize yr picture, or accept the ugly space. Captions can be
set to be keep with the table or figure, to avoid a loose caption at the
bottom of the page.
For justifying "half sentences" and avoiding they run towards the end
of the line insert a tab after the period at the end of the sentence
before hitting enter.
I hope this helps you. If you must these figures / tables at the
bottom (pls tell me why) I will see if I can come up with some other
suggestions.

 

[me13013]

Howdy, Robert,

and Robert M. Franz replied:

It's always good to mention the version of Word you're using ...

Oops, sorry. It is Word 2004 for Mac, version 11.3.5.

I'm not entirely sure why you're using a (custom?) bookmark at all,
since you can cross reference to captions automatically.

Several reasons. (1) I have figures, tables, chapters, sections,
equations, drawings, and a few other similarly numbered items, and it
seems easier to use one consistent means of tracking and naming
numbered items that to have to use something different for each one;
besides I think the ones that Word has built-in support for is limited
to the first four or five in my list. (2) When I started the document
I tried to figure out how to use the built-in methods for numbering
figures and it was quicker to figure out how to build the same
functionality myself. (3) I had a bad experience with an earlier
version of Word (late 1990s running under Win97 I think) in which it
would hose my table of contents 90% of the times that I tried to
update it. A coworker eventually figured out this was the result of
having change tracking enabled at the same time as the TOC update.
Given this past history for the product I have a strong feeling that
the fewer features I use, the greater chance I have that they will
work together.

In long documents, as a rule of thumb, you want your pictures as inline
objects. Spares you a lot of grief. Makes your documents a tad bit less
"sexy" (no text flowing around your objects), but still ...

If you do that (read: your picture is set to "inline with text", place
it in its own paragraph, and the caption below it),

Yep. That is what I have. My pictures currently are "inline with
text" (format picture:layout:inline with text). I couldn't see any
other way of keeping a picture with its caption.

then the manual way
of aligning the figures is by using paragraph formatting to the picture
paragraph: Spacing before x pt. Not much use per se, because instead of
a large gap at the bottom of the page, you get it above the figure ...

Well I tried something like that. But the idea of having all that
blank space is really unnacceptible for something that it supposed to
look like a professional document (it is my PhD thesis). So instead
of the blank space I attempted to split the paragraphs they way you
would see them split in a scientific journal that has pictures at the
bottom of a page.

The problem I had is this. Suppose I have a 20 line paragraph and my
figure+caption either has to go before it on page X, leaving 10 extra
lines on page X, or after it on Page X+1, putting several lines of
text in front of it on page X+1 and a buch of text after it on page X
+1. Things would look better if I split that long paragraph, so that
the figure+caption is at the bottom of the page. But I am using both-
sides justification and I can't find any way to convince word that the
bottom line on the first half of that paragraph (which Word now thinks
is two paragraphs) should be fully justified. Unless I manually
insert the right number of spaces between words, I iguess.

By the way, my pictures currently are "inline with text" (format
picture:layout:inline with text). I couldn't see any other way of
keeping a picture with its caption.

Also worht noting is that not all of my figures are pictures. Some of
them are, as far as Word is concerned, tables, with specific
formatting.

Adding spaces - behold!

If you really need floating objects (Shapes in Word lingo),

Thanks for the jargon tip. I'll look for "shapes" in word help and
see what it means. Maybe it will lead to something useful.

then there's no way around it: you paginate the document once only (in the end).

Hmmm. I find that hard to believe. Especially since both "text
boxes" and "frames" allow me to bind a pictures+text combo (and other
things) to top or bottom of a page (and to other positions). The
problem I'm having is that bookmarks and text boxes have an
adversarial relationship to each other.

How wide are your figures? As wide as the normal paragraph width? I
couldn't see how they would affect justification then (because you would
not get thinner paragraphs).

Full paragraph width.

Since my first message I have found a way to ALMOST do this. Here's
what I have learned by experimentation.

(1) Creating a text box (by selecting my picture+caption and doing
insert:text box) trashes any bookmarks inside it. However, I can
recreate the bookmarks after I create the text box. Annoying but
workable.

(2) However, outside of the text box Word still somewhat pretends
those bookmarks don't exist. If you try to GOTO such a bookmark it
says it can't find it. But if you have a cross reference to it, the
cross reference finds it. So far so good. But...

(3) The cross reference gets the wrong page number. Instead of e.g.
page 6 which is where the text box was, the cross reference to the
bookmark's page sez it's page 1.

(4) OK, so I can convet the text box to a frame. Now the cross
reference is able to get the right page number.

(5) As near I can tell, this works alright for picture+text (though I
have yet to try it on every figure). However, for table+text when I
convert text box to frame Word adds a border around every cell in the
table, and try as I might, I cannot get it to remove the border.
Hopefully with a little more head pounding I will figure out how to
remove those borders (I am able to remove some with the format:borders
and shading menu, but frustratingly not all). Then I can get on to
the issue of reformatting the table, because also in the act of
converting to a frame Word trashes my table formatting.

Thanks for your help. I appreciate it. If what I've posted above
spurs any other ideas, please let me know,
Bob H

 

[me13013]

Frankly, I think you make things far too complicated and that all
because you want yr tables and figures at the bottom of a page. If
it's only for the looks of yr document I would suggest to abandon this
path.

Well, that's not really a viable solution if I want a professional
looking document. Shouldn't I expect Word to be able to do this?

Your List of Figs and List of tables can be generated by the captions,
so why you complicate things by adding bookmarks? Also xrefs can refer
to captions (texts and/or ID number, and/or page number for that
matter).

See my reply to Robert Franz's message for why I went with bookmarks.
Perhaps the built-in Word stuff for figures and table may have been
the right way to go, but I have more lists of items than Word seems to
have built-ins for (as near as I can tell; I could be wrong). The
general solution seemed to be to use bookmarks. Plus I would have to
trust Word to create the List of Figs, and considering my very
frustrating experience with an earlier version of Word, I dont have
that level of trust. You will no doubt be surprised to learn that I
am using book marks and cross references to create my table of
contents, because of the experiences I had in the past where Word
would trash my TOC on a regular basis. I was on a tight schedule to
get the thesis prepared for content review and I did not want to take
the risk of having to continually be recreating things like TOC and
list of figures. I lost of lot of time to that circa 1999 but I
learned from that mistake to try to use as little of Word's special-
case functionality as possible because it very often has problems
(e.g. in my current version if I try to insert a footnote while in
split-window view Word crashes and I lose whatever changes have yet to
be saved).

If a picture doesnt fit it will automatically be displayed on the next
page with an "ugly" white space on the previous page. You can
rearrange yr text in the end (you said you are ready, so this can be
done), or resize yr picture, or accept the ugly space. Captions can be
set to be keep with the table or figure, to avoid a loose caption at the
bottom of the page.

Yep. I am doing those sort of things with the "keep lines together"
and "keep with next paragraph" stuff.

For justifying "half sentences" and avoiding they run towards the end
of the line insert a tab after the period at the end of the sentence
before hitting enter.

YESSS!! Thanks. That was the magic mushroom I was looking for in my
first attempted solution. I'll have to try that to see if it works.

I hope this helps you. If you must these figures / tables at the
bottom (pls tell me why) I will see if I can come up with some other
suggestions.

The document should look professional. It's a PhD thesis and will
represent me throughout the rest of my career.

I think I have enough info now that I can solve this, provided your
tab-at-the-end-of-a-paragraph works.

Thanks,
Bob H

 

[Robert M. Franz (RMF)]

me13013 wrote:
[..]

YESSS!! Thanks. That was the magic mushroom I was looking for in my
first attempted solution. I'll have to try that to see if it works.

yes it does. And depending on compatibility settings (in Winword, that's
Tools | Options | Compatibility: Don't expand character spaces on a line
that ends with SHIFT-RETURN), you can get justification to work on lines
ending with SHIFT-RETURN also, without the tab.

I've "typeset" (more than) my share of theses in the 90s, and with Word.
You can certainly create more caption categories. One of the students
came up with an interesting idea: use one generic category for all (so
you don't end up with possibly quite short "table of Figures", "table of
Tables", "table of whatnot".

But things should work with your own bookmarks as well. In Frames, for
instance. Not sure why this does not yield good results with you: maybe
you're better off asking in a mac-office group, if more problems arise.

But ultimately, you do typeset manually here. Only once. Your thesis is
worth it. In large documents that change a lot, you probably settle with
some white space here and there more easily.

HTH
Robert

 

[Henk57]

Bob: here is a trick I use for captions with figures. Make a paragraph
for figures (eg BodyText_Fig). This allows you to select "Keep with
next" (which would be the caption) and set space for/after settings
consistently for yr document. If you set yr default inserting of
pictures to In line with text you can simply put yr cursor in the
BodyText_Fig paragraph, and select Insert/Picture/From file...
I also use separate styles for captions for figures and tables, as the
latter is set as keep with next (and not the fig caption), and they
both have different spacings for/after.

Trust me, I have a large book (and growing) with a 20 + page TOC, TOF,
LOT and with Appendices with different heading levels. The TOC works
impeccably since its conception. You can download the TOC as a pdf,
just in case you want to see how it looks from
www.eurebooks.eu/downloads/information
(I am on Win XP / Word 2003 so some commands may be a bit different in
Mac).

me13013 wrote:
[..]--
For justifying "half sentences" and avoiding they run towards the end
of the line insert a tab after the period at the end of the sentence
before hitting enter.-

YESSS!! Thanks. That was the magic mushroom I was looking for in my
first attempted solution. I'll have to try that to see if it works.-

yes it does. And depending on compatibility settings (in Winword,
that's
Tools | Options | Compatibility: Don't expand character spaces on a
line
that ends with SHIFT-RETURN), you can get justification to work on
lines
ending with SHIFT-RETURN also, without the tab.

I've "typeset" (more than) my share of theses in the 90s, and with
Word.
You can certainly create more caption categories. One of the students
came up with an interesting idea: use one generic category for all (so

you don't end up with possibly quite short "table of Figures", "table
of
Tables", "table of whatnot".

But things should work with your own bookmarks as well. In Frames, for

instance. Not sure why this does not yield good results with you: maybe

you're better off asking in a mac-office group, if more problems
arise.

But ultimately, you do typeset manually here. Only once. Your thesis is

worth it. In large documents that change a lot, you probably settle
with
some white space here and there more easily.

HTH
Robert
--
/"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign | MS
\ / | MVP
X Against HTML | for
/ \ in e-mail & news | Word

 

[me13013]

yes it does.

I couldn't get Henk's tab thing to work. But re-reading what he
wrote, I think it's intended to solve a differenrt problem.

And depending on compatibility settings (in Winword, that's
Tools | Options | Compatibility: Don't expand character spaces on a line
that ends with SHIFT-RETURN), you can get justification to work on lines
ending with SHIFT-RETURN also, without the tab.

Thanks. SHIFT-RETURN does what I was looking for. A justify-both-
sides paragraph that ends with a SHIFT-RETURN justifies both sides of
the bottom line. That's what I was looking for.

I've "typeset" (more than) my share of theses in the 90s, and with Word.
You can certainly create more caption categories. One of the students
came up with an interesting idea: use one generic category for all (so
you don't end up with possibly quite short "table of Figures", "table of
Tables", "table of whatnot".

Thanks. Next time I will know to use that.

But things should work with your own bookmarks as well. In Frames, for
instance. Not sure why this does not yield good results with you: maybe
you're better off asking in a mac-office group, if more problems arise.

I asked in microsoft.public.word.mac but got no answers. Looking
there now, I see that the group is not active. Only 9 posts this year
(yet, four of those are replies; odd).

(chuckle) It did not occur to me that there are separate forum/groups
for office and word, since word is a subset of office. I see now
there is a microsoft.public.office.mac forum, though I think my
chances of getting answers there are slim too, considering the traffic
level (more posts than microsoft.public.word.mac, but much lower
freequency of replies).

But ultimately, you do typeset manually here. Only once.

I am quite surprised by that. Well, in one sense I am. I think I
should expect a mature word processing program to be able to do that.
C'est la vie.

Your thesis is
worth it. In large documents that change a lot, you probably settle with
some white space here and there more easily.

HTH

Yes, it did, thanks.

 

[me13013]

Bob: here is a trick I use for captions with figures. Make a paragraph
for figures (eg BodyText_Fig). This allows you to select "Keep with
next" (which would be the caption) and set space for/after settings
consistently for yr document. If you set yr default inserting of
pictures to In line with text you can simply put yr cursor in the
BodyText_Fig paragraph, and select Insert/Picture/From file...
I also use separate styles for captions for figures and tables, as the
latter is set as keep with next (and not the fig caption), and they
both have different spacings for/after.

What you are calling "paragraph" is called a "atyle" on my version.
And I have set up styles for paragraphs and captions, like you
describe.

Trust me, I have a large book (and growing) with a 20 + page TOC, TOF,
LOT and with Appendices with different heading levels. The TOC works
impeccably since its conception. ...

OK. I trust that the TOC works for you. Didn't work for me in the
version of Word I was using in the late 1990s on some version of the
windows OS. I was maintaining an interface spec, about 100 pages.
I'd edit the spec, it'd look fine, I'd update the TOC and more often
than not the TOC was replaced by a string of maybe 75 random looking
digits. And I generally had to update the TOC after any change
because I had to print a paper copy to commit to the ISO9000 vault.
This seemingly never-ending battle finally ended when a co-worker
figured out the magic secret. You had to disable revision tracking
(or something like that) while you updated the TOC. What stuck in my
mind from that was (1) Be wary of Word's TOC support, and (2) Be wary
any time you try to use a combination of features in Word. As I
pointed out somewhere else in this thread, I am still working around
another combo-feature bug (insert footnot while in split window--
crash!), so I feel point 2 is a very good rul of thumb for Word users.

Thanks for you help,
Bob H

 

[Robert M. Franz (RMF)]

Bob: here is a trick I use for captions with figures. Make a paragraph
for figures (eg BodyText_Fig). This allows you to select "Keep with
next" (which would be the caption) and set space for/after settings
consistently for yr document. If you set yr default inserting of
pictures to In line with text you can simply put yr cursor in the
BodyText_Fig paragraph, and select Insert/Picture/From file...

yep, that's how we all do it when working with long documents long
enough, I presume.

I have a "Picture" style first thing after setting up bodytext style in
every such template I design; not only because of the Keep with Next
setting, but also because my bodytext usually has an exact line height.
_Not_ a good idea with inlineShapes ...


[..]

Trust me, I have a large book (and growing) with a 20 + page TOC, TOF,
LOT and with Appendices with different heading levels. The TOC works
impeccably since its conception.

Well, you don't have to persuade me: the professor I worked for had this
1000+ page book in two languages, updated every other year or so. He
wanted _three_ table of contents (overview, ToC, detailed ToC).

You can download the TOC as a pdf,
just in case you want to see how it looks from
www.eurebooks.eu/downloads/information

Looks nice. Funny, said professor was pretty good himself in getting
funding out of EU FP!

Greetings
Robert

 

[Robert M. Franz (RMF)]

Henk57 wrote:
[..]

www.eurebooks.eu/downloads/information

_By the way_: folio by chapter is so last millennium typesetting ... ;-)

John McGhie has probably written about this issue in the NG often enough
to prepare the following article:

http://word.mvps.org/faqs/numbering/chapternumber.htm

Greetings
Robert

 

[Henk57]

1. I don't claim this Picture style trick as mine But frankly I
think not many people are aware of this possibility. FWIW, I also have
a "Text-in-Frame" style, but found that it is better to split them into
three TiF_Start, TiF_Middle, TiF_Closure. This allows for different
spacing IN the frame as well as preceding and following the boxed text.


2. Thanks for your comments on the FP7 eBook. I just wanted to show
the OP (and others interested) that a professional-looking TOC can be
compiled with Word.
I read John's article and fully agree for "normal" loose-leafed books
when it comes to replacing individual pages. But this is an eBook. The
page-numbering by chapter is chosen because of the frequent updates and
extensions (the book is subscription based with additions). In this way
the chapters that are not changed dont have to be printed again which
otherwise obviously wld be required. As this has nothing to do with
the original post, nor with Word directly I will sent you a mail with
some further remarks.

Henk57 wrote:
[..]-
www.eurebooks.eu/downloads/information -

_By the way_: folio by chapter is so last millennium typesetting ...
;-)

John McGhie has probably written about this issue in the NG often
enough
to prepare the following article:

http://word.mvps.org/faqs/numbering/chapternumber.htm

Greetings
Robert
--
/"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign | MS
\ / | MVP
X Against HTML | for
/ \ in e-mail & news | Word

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Hi me13013,

See here for Google/Entourage gateway to newsgroups for MacWord,
MacExcel, and other MS programs for the Mac:
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/community/community.aspx?pid=newsgroups>
These are the correct Mac Office groups to be using. Both the Office
and Word group here have a pretty high frequency of replies, I
think--none of your tries hit the active groups. But this particular
type of question is better off in this longdocs group anyhow.

In Word 2004 on my machine, inserting a footnote with the screen split
does not cause a crash. However, the split does go away when the
footnote pane opens. This is Normal View. In Page Layout, nothing odd
happens at all when I insert a footnote in split screen. You might try
the standard troubleshooting tricks, here--reproducible crashes are
usually fixable. Damaged Prefs or Normal Template are the most common
causes.
http://word.mvps.org/Mac/TroubleshootingIndex.html

hope that's useful for the future.

DM