Locked anchors move

[RFIC Engineer]

What I am trying to do is create two figures, that are vertically aligned,
and have captions that update from left to right. The captions are texts
boxes, which are below each figure, that contain the fields "Fig. 1" and
"Fig. 2". These captions update according to the placement of the anchors.
If the anchors are anchored to the same paragraph, updating the captions
causes their numbering to appear out of order (from left to right, "Fig. 2"
and "Fig. 1").

I have manually moved the anchors so the diagram and caption on the left are
anchored to the paragraph above the paragraph the diagram and caption on the
right is anchored to. This makes the captions update as desired, so I have
locked the anchors.

However, when I move all four objects simultaneously, the anchors move to
one common (the same) paragraph. This does not happen when I move the
diagram and caption of either the right or left set, but not both
simultaneously.

I have tried checking, "move with text".

I need to keep the diagrams visio, text wrapping top & bottom, captions.

Details:
Word 2002 SP3
Two visio diagrams (anchors locked)
Top and bottom text wrapping
Both diagrams have captions (text boxes)

 

[Keith Howell]

I am waiting to instal my Visio so I can't check this out but I am guessing
it might be to do with the visio 'anchors locked'. Try unlocked then group
all your items together with Draw/Group

 

[CyberTaz]

It seems that moving multiple items simultaneously is not a "relative"
operation. Similar to rearranging slides in PPt - if you select slides 6 &
8, drag them in between slides 14 & 15 they both squeeze in there - not two
slides apart. Have you tried using a 2-row/1-column table?

BTW - "Locking" the anchors simply prevents dragging the anchors,
themselves. It doesn't amount to stapling them in place.

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac



On 4/4/07 11:22 PM, in article
(e-mail address removed), "RFIC Engineer" <RFIC

 

[RFIC Engineer]

I have a hard time believing that the WORD developers would intend for the
anchors lock function to only prevent you from clicking on the anchors and
moving them manually. After all, the click-able area for the anchors is so
much smaller than most picture objects. Its already bad enough that the
anchors are locked to a paragraph and not a specific spot on the page. Then
the only other goal of locking the anchors would be to keep the anchor from
moving to another paragraph when the picture objects are moved.

 

[RFIC Engineer]

Here is what works:

Make the text wrapping square, for the captions (text boxes), at least the
one on the left. The "distance from text" may need to be adjusted in the
advanced layout for the caption (text box) format (I had to set the left
spacing to 1"). Text box size may also have to be adjusted, or the "distance
from text (left, right, top, or bottom)" could bring about the desired effect.

Theoretically, the "tight" text wrapping setting may be used.

Now I need to find a way to set the default setting to a caption (text box),
to make the process faster. "Set AutoShape Defaults" seems to only affect
new text boxes, not captions which happen to be text boxes.

 

[CyberTaz]

Sorry if it isn't what you would prefer to hear, but that's exactly how it
is Anchors don't lock to a page because there is no page in Word's
internal file structure to which they _can_ lock. You may also be surprised
to find that the concept of "pages" isn't a factor in the design of Word,
either, othere than as imposed by content, format & printer constraints.

Have a look at the following link. Even though it is specifically written
about Mac Word the same applies for PC Word. There are also links from that
page to others which you might find useful. One of them is listed below as
well. Again, don't be put off by the reference to Word 2000... nothing has
changed since then (as of 2003, anyway)... especially the section captioned
"Limitations of Floating Objects":

http://word.mvps.org/mac/pagesinword.html

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=268713

 

[RFIC Engineer]

CyberTaz, don't concentrate so much on this page-paragraph business. It is a
drawback that is apparently already established within the community. I only
mentioned it so we can conclude that the purpose of the lock anchors is to
keep the anchor locked to a postion (page or paragraph), even when the
picture object moves. This should be true whether the object is moved
manually, or from the text moving through the document, and regardless of
what else is being moved at the same time.