Hi Jeremy,
The explanation below (from a previous post by John McGhie) is about more
than just captions, but it should help.
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Word makes up a print job by "filling pages" beginning at the top of the
file. A Word document is best thought of as a three-layer sandwich, with
text in the middle and two drawing layers front and back. There are
actually 22 different "stories" and they do not necessarily have any z-order
relationship: it's just easier to think of it as three
By setting graphics inline with text, they will behave like a large
paragraph. They will be pushed to the next page if the graphic will no
longer fit on the one it was on. But it retains its relativity with the
text. Word cannot flow text "backwards" through the document to fill the
gaps: you have to do that manually at final output time. Sorry: if you need
that function, you need Publishing software such as LaTeX.
By floating the graphic, you are now putting the object in the drawing
layer. You now have to set whether it is in front of or behind the text,
and which paragraph it is anchored to. The fundamental "unit" of a Word
document is the paragraph. You can anchor graphics only to paragraphs.
You cannot anchor to a "page" in Word, because a word document does not
contain any pages. Pages are generated on the fly at output time (when they
are displayed or printed). Knowing this is fundamental to understanding
pagination in Word. There are no pages: not until you print. They're never
stored in the file: they don't exist until the job goes to the printer.
Sorry to labour the point, but it's very important.
You cannot take a paragraph out of the text flow unless you make it into a
graphic (by putting it in a text box). If you do, it will behave like a
graphic: floating around in the drawing layer. The text box must be anchored
to a paragraph.
The "anchor" sets the origin from which Word calculates the position of the
parts of a graphic.
To avoid having drawing objects wandering around your document, always
anchor the drawing object to its accompanying text. If you are going to do
that, you might as well make it inline: it's less trouble. If the thing is
floating, you have to reposition it each time it does move a page: if it's
sitting on a paragraph that justifies correctly, the picture will always
land in the correct spot.
Now, let's see: did I directly answer your question? Not adequately...
Let's try again:
1) Don't bother with floating graphics on long documents, they're not worth
it. For short documents with eye-catching effects, they are the only way to
achieve those affects. For long documents you have to maintain over time,
forget it.
2) Learn to use the paragraph properties Keep With Next and Page Break
Before to control what happens when Word makes up the pages. Keep With Next
holds a paragraph on the same page as the one after it: throwing it to the
next page if necessary. If you set five paragraphs to keep with next, they
will all move as a block. Page Break Before generates a page break before
each paragraph that has that property.
3) To save stuffing around with this for every picture, set these
properties as part of a "Pix" style that you use for the paragraphs you use
to mount pictures on.
4) When inserting captions, create a blank paragraph after the picture
paragraph, place your insertion point in it and then use Insert Caption.
This places the caption as text in the text layer, rather than as a floating
graphic in a text box in the drawing layer. This has the added advantage
that if the caption is in the text layer, the Table of Contents and Index
Generators can see it: if it is in a Text Box, they can't.
5) To ensure the picture and its caption do not get separated, make sure
the Picture paragraph has a Keep With Next and the Caption paragraph does
not. The page break, if it is needed, will occur either before or after the
pair of them.
6) For difficult situations, create a borderless table and place your
graphic in that. You can then use the table cells to minutely position the
graphic and its caption. Note: a graphic MUST be inline to be "in" a table,
otherwise it floats on top of it.
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