Video Transcript Video Duration: 8.51Mins

Word’s ‘Caption’ tool

Video transcript– Video Duration: 8.51mins

A caption is a numbered label that you can add to a object in your document such as a diagram, chart or a table. It contains a label, such as ‘figure’, ‘table’ or ‘equation’, and an automatically applied number. Do you see how the number 1 here is in a darker shade of grey than the rest? That indicates an automatic field code. And you can also add a description within the caption. So, you should use captions for all of the figures, tables and equations, if you have them, within your dissertation or thesis, because captions will automatically number your figures in consecutive order. You can update them as necessary. If you delete a caption in the middle of your document you can update your caption numbering just to make sure they are back in consecutive order. [. [MC1]You can create an automatic listing for them, just like a Table of Contents, and again you can update this throughout the lifetime of your document.

So let’s see how they work.

Inserting a Caption

So, here is the first image in my document. So, I’m going to select the image, select References on the Ribbon, and from the Captions group choose InsertCaption. This presents the Caption dialog box. Automatically it places ‘Figure 1’ into the Caption label. It also positions the label below the selected item, or the image in this case. Here is the label, it’s preselected ‘Figure’ – so in rest of this box I can add a description for the Caption. So, I’m just going to add a colon and a space too.[MC2] And click on OK.

[at 02.15 the new caption is only visible for a second – not really long enough]

Here we have another image, if I click on this image again I can click on Insert Caption in the Captions group or I can right-click on the image and choose Insert Caption that way. Automatically it has labelled it as ‘Figure 2’, so I am just going to add my description and I could click on OK now and that would apply a second caption to my document, but I just want to show you this Numbering button here. If I click on this button we have the option here of including the chapter number. If I click on this option we can see that wherever the chapter starts with a style heading 1, it will use a separator and here you get an indication of the effect. So, we would expect this particular image, because it’s in Chapter Two, to be labelled as Figure 2.1. So, I click on OK, and click on OK again, and there you can see that’s how it has appeared. So back on the first image, it’s updated itself so that it’s showing Figure 1.1 because it’s the first instance within Chapter One of a caption. So, this process is exactly the same for figures, tables and equations throughout your document.

Here I have a table so I’ll just quickly show you the slight difference. So, I click into the table, choose InsertCaption. Word still thinks that I’m looking at a figure, so I’m going to change the ‘Label’ to a ‘Table’ and so, Word has registered here that the table is in Chapter Three and a glance at our Navigation Pane will confirm that. So, it’s a table in Chapter Three and it’s the first instance of a table in Chapter Three. And again, we can add some text here for a description and click on OK, and a caption has been added. The convention for captions and tables is that captions appear above the table.

If you find that the colour of the text of your caption doesn’t quite suit your document that is easy to change, because a caption is actually a style. So, if we click on the Home tab and look at the Styles panel and look for the Captions style we can click on the arrow and choose Modify and then instead of this blue/grey colour we can choose automatic black. Click on OK and the change is made.

So, if we wanted to create a listing for our captions that’s very simple to do.

Creating a List of Figures

I’ll click on the References tab and in the Captions group I’m going to choose InsertTableofFigures. Because I was working last with adding captions to tables, it’s presented a Caption label for Table so I’m just going to change that to Figure and click on OK, and there it has brought in the two instances of figures which have captions applied to them. If I click onto this text I can see that the listing is highlighted in grey so I can that it is an active, dynamic area. I can use it as a navigational tool so if I wanted to go check something with figure 2.1, I can press the Control key and click on the entry and it takes me to that particular figure.

Updating a List of Figures

There are a few ways of updating a List of Figures or a List of Tables. First, I click onto the listing, then from the References tab in the Captions group, I can click on UpdateTable. Here I can update page numbers only or update the entire table and click on OK. I’ll just cancel out of that. A second way is to right-click on the listing, and choose UpdateField; it produces the same dialog box - I’ll just cancel out of that. A third option is to press F9. Remember, by choosing Updateentire table Word will check your headings and page numbering and it will look for any changes so if I click on OK there we can see a change for Figure 2.1.

To create a List of Tables, it’s the same procedure. From the References tab, in the Captions group, you choose Insert Table of Figures. I just need to change the Caption label from Figure to Table and click on OK. Any tables in my document that have a table caption applied to them will be displayed in my listing.Now watch the video on adding page breaks…

[MC1]should I delete this part – not sure if I actually tell viewers how to do this

[MC2]Delete this if i can. As it doesn’t make sense when viewed