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About this lesson

Learn to create and link captions to images and text.

Exercise files

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Using Captions - Exercise.docx
2.4 MB Using Captions - Exercise Solution.docx
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Quick reference

Using Captions

Captions are basically cross-reference labels on pictures, figures, and other objects in a document.

When to use

Captions are commonly known as the descriptions under photos.  But they are also a technical cross-reference tool that will link document text to the caption. Finally, captions can be gathered into a “Table of Figures”, like a Table of Contents, with page number references.

Graphical user interface, text, application Description automatically generated

Instructions

Add a caption to a photo
  1. Click the first picture in the document, and then click the References Ribbon, Captions group.
  2. Enter the text you would like to appear under the picture.
  3. Change the Label and Position if desired.
  4. Click OK
Create a cross-reference within the text to the Figure

  1. Click into your text and place the insertion point where you want the cross-reference link to appear.
  2. Click the References Ribbon, Captions group, Cross Reference
  3. Make sure the Reference type shows “Figure” and choose from the list compiled from your already captioned pictures.
  4. Click Insert
Create a Table of Figures
  1. Click into your document and place the insertion point where you want the Table of Figures to appear.
  2. Click the References Ribbon, Captions group, Insert Table of Figures. 
  3. The default settings are usually fine, click OK
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  • 00:04 We're going to be using captions on pictures.
  • 00:06 Pictures are also known as figures, and
  • 00:09 captions are generally known as the descriptions under our photos,
  • 00:13 but they are also a technical cross-reference tool.
  • 00:17 Okay, so we're going to use the pictures below for this example.
  • 00:20 I'm going to click on the very first picture.
  • 00:22 On the References ribbon, we have a Caption section, I have Insert Caption,
  • 00:27 Insert Table of Figures, and very similar to the Table of Contents feature.
  • 00:32 And then the Cross-reference, incredibly important.
  • 00:34 In case these pictures float to different pages,
  • 00:37 the Cross-reference will always find their way back.
  • 00:40 All right, Insert Caption.
  • 00:42 In this particular case, it starts with a number 1, and
  • 00:45 try as I might to hit the backspace.
  • 00:47 It is not going to let me get rid of that number 1, but
  • 00:49 I do want to put in the rest of the name.
  • 00:51 So I'm going to put a comma Flower.
  • 00:55 Do I want to label this as a figure, and
  • 00:57 do I want to include the label with the caption?
  • 01:00 Uncheck this.
  • 01:01 And now, we'll call it Figure 1, Flower.
  • 01:04 It is your option to not have that label included, I'm going to turn it on.
  • 01:09 Maybe you'd like to change the numbering format, click on Numbering, and
  • 01:13 I can change this to ABCs or the Roman numeral system.
  • 01:16 I'm going to leave this as the numbers right now.
  • 01:19 If I'm writing a book, maybe I want the chapter number in there.
  • 01:23 I'm going to go ahead and click OK on this, and click OK on this one.
  • 01:27 Notice what happened, it pushed the other ones down below.
  • 01:32 Let's click on the second one, same thing.
  • 01:35 Insert Caption, it auto-numbers it number 2, I'll call it Desert.
  • 01:39 Leaving everything else the same and clicking OK.
  • 01:42 And then we'll do the last one, this is koala.
  • 01:45 Insert Caption number 3, and OK.
  • 01:49 All right, now that those have lined up,
  • 01:52 we're going to put the cross references here in the red text.
  • 01:55 So I want to cross-reference to the flower picture, select the line where I want
  • 02:00 the cross reference to be, come up to the captions group.
  • 02:03 Click on Cross-reference, the number of the items has been alarmed because there's
  • 02:07 nothing in the example box.
  • 02:09 So hit the drop down arrow and explore this and way the bottom.
  • 02:12 Remember I mean figures, not numbers, so I'll click the figure.
  • 02:15 Here they are, Flower, Desert, Koala.
  • 02:18 Do I want the entire caption, drop down arrow, or just the label, just the text.
  • 02:24 I want the entire caption, hit Insert.
  • 02:27 There it is. On the outside,
  • 02:29 notice that this box stayed here.
  • 02:31 I'll use it again.
  • 02:33 All right, when we push that over, select the next area for the next reference.
  • 02:38 Since this is still open, I don't have to go up and hit the Cross-reference again.
  • 02:44 Desert and Insert.
  • 02:45 And now, the koala one.
  • 02:46 Click and drag that line where I want it to land.
  • 02:50 Koala, hit Insert.
  • 02:52 There we have it.
  • 02:53 Close that out.
  • 02:55 Now, it's time for the table of figures.
  • 02:58 I'm going to push this line to the next page with a Ctrl + Enter for page break.
  • 03:03 You can see on the Navigation pane what's happening.
  • 03:07 Double click under that line.
  • 03:09 Now up to the Captions group, Insert Table of Figures.
  • 03:13 Take a look at this, here's how the figures will appear or a web preview.
  • 03:19 If I push this out to a webpage, do I want page numbers to show up?
  • 03:22 Sure, do I want to align them?
  • 03:23 Sure, do I want to use hyperlinks?
  • 03:26 Sure, look what else I have, Options and Modify.
  • 03:29 Always click these to find out what is behind the box.
  • 03:32 I'm going to click on Options.
  • 03:34 At this point, I'm not going to play with any of these styles in here,
  • 03:38 I'm just going to stay with the basic table of figures.
  • 03:41 But if you want to play with these, you're welcome to.
  • 03:45 I'm going to go ahead and click OK.
  • 03:47 And here we have it, the flower, the desert, the koala.
  • 03:51 Let's practice.
  • 03:52 Let's push a page break in here.
  • 03:55 Right in front of the koala picture,
  • 03:57 I'm going to hit Ctrl + Enter to force us to page 2.
  • 04:01 When I scroll down to my table of figures, it did not automatically update.
  • 04:07 Notice up in the caption section, I now have Update Table.
  • 04:11 I clicked into the table, hit Update Table.
  • 04:15 Update page numbers only or the entire table?
  • 04:17 Click OK and watch those page numbers change.
  • 04:20 The cross-references are always linked, and
  • 04:24 the table of figures will always work when you use
  • 04:29 everything in the captions group to help each other out.

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