Positioning figures automatically

[Charlie]

I often insert figures from other sources into Word 2007 documents, mostly
academic manuscripts. Cannot have blank space in documents. Want each figure
to be placed on first available page (i.e., one with enough space) on or
after its first mention in the text. I have never been able to do this
automatically, but it's such a common algorithm that it seems there must be a
simple way to do it. I would be very grateful for advice.

 

[Stefan Blom]

If you are saying that you want the figure on a page by itself and have text
flow from the preceding to the following page, then you are out of luck. For
this degree of control, you need page layout software.

What you can do is add a caption for each figure and then insert a
cross-reference to the caption, indicating (say) "above" or "below."

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP


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[Charlie]

Thanks for replying. No, I don't want figures all on their own pages.
Suppose I want to introduce Figure 1 in the middle of page 6 of my document.
If Figure 1 will fit on that page, that's where I would like it. If there is
not enough room on the page after I refer to it, then I want the text to
continue and the figure to be bumped to the top of page 7, with more text
continuing afer that. If I introduce two figures on page 6, say, and the
second one won't even fit on page 7, then I want it to bump to page 8. I do
insert captions for all my figures. Is your cross-referencing method
suitable for this situation? If so, can you givde me a couple more lines of
detail. Thanks.

 

[Henk57]

Sorry, Charlie, Word cannot do this magic. You can determine where you
want to have the picture (set it by default as In line with text) but
it will not automatically jump to a new position depending on available
space. Anyway, what do you want this picture to do when you later
add/modify the text or its style?
Of course you can do some text moving by hand, but I wld postpone it to
the very last. You can also resize the picture, to fit it in, or use a
table cell to host your picture (you can set the cell to fixed width so
you control its size).
But some automation cannot be arranged for with Word to the best of my
knowledge.

 

[Charlie]

If I insert new text or change line spacing (as in going from a draft to a
final version) I still want to follow exactly the same algorithm for figure
placement. It is very standard to place figures this way, which is why I
can't imagine that there is no automated way to do it. I've gotten good over
the years at moving figures around, but I waste so much time implementing
something that is 100% algorithmic.

 

[Stefan Blom]

One way to keep figures and captions together, assuming that they are "In
line with text," is to make use of "Keep with next" formatting (Paragraph
dialog box). This could be quite useful, but it will be less "intelligent"
than what you seem to be hoping for...

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP


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