Anchors!!!

[Mat Hickman]

Hi,

I'm trying to write quite a lengthy document which involves a fair few
figures with captions. I only want one figure per page, and that figure will
sit at the top of the page with the caption underneath. I want the figure and
caption to stay put, and for text to flow around them.

I'm happy that I can insert a picture, add a textbox for its caption, group
them together, float them by wrapping text 'top and bottom', position it by
putting 'centered' and 'top' relative to margin and then un-check move object
with text.

However, the picture always needs to be anchored to a paragraph - WHY?! This
is really annoying, and the online tutorial gives the false hope that you can
anchor a graphic to anything you chose... Quote: "Tip The graphic and the
anchor must be on the same page. If you add or remove text and the anchor
moves to another page, the graphic will join it. **So you always want to
position the anchor on the page that you want the graphic to appear on.**"

That last sentence is misleading, right? It should say that if the the
paragraph your graphic is anchored to moves page, the graphic will move with
it, yes? Or can I anchor a graphic to a page, rather than a paragraph?

It seems a complete contradiction in terms to say "don't move object with
text" and then do exactly that!!!

Is there anyway I can 'nail' my graphics to a page and have the text flow
around it? Ideally I'd like the flexibility to move the graphic to a
different page if needs be, and for all the text to adjust accordingly. Maybe
I ask too much of Word?!

Any advice would be much appreciated,

Thanks,

Mat

 

[Jezebel]

You're right about the ambiguity. "Don't move with text" means that the
graphic has a fixed position on the page; but it none the less moves to
another page if the paragraph to which it is anchored moves to another page.

The graphic has to be anchored to a paragraph because that's the way Word
functions as a data structure. The graphic data is stored within the
paragraph object.

No, there is no way to fix a graphic to a specific page in the way you
describe. There are two basic methods for document-creation programs: start
with the content then apply formatting to create pages; or start with pages
and fill them with content. Word uses method 1. Page layout programs like
Publisher, PageMaker, etc use method 2.