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About this lesson
Learn to create and link captions to images and text.
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Exercise files
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Using Captions.docx2.4 MB
Quick reference
Using Captions
Learn to create and link captions to images and text.
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.
Instructions
Add a caption to a photo
- Click the first picture in the document, and then click the References Ribbon, Captions group.
- Enter the text you would like to appear under the picture.
- Change the Label and Position if desired.
- Click OK.
Create a cross reference within the text to the Figure
- Click into your text and place the insertion point where you want the cross-reference link to appear.
- Click the References Ribbon, Captions group, Cross Reference.
- Make sure the Reference type shows “Figure” and choose from the list compiled from your already captioned pictures.
- Click Insert.
Create a Table of Figures
- Click into your document and place the insertion point where you want the Table of Figures to appear.
- Click the References Ribbon, Captions group, Insert Table of Figures.
- The default settings are usually fine, click OK.
- 00:05 Captions are commonly known as the descriptions under photos, but they're
- 00:09 also a technical cross reference tool that will link document text to the caption.
- 00:14 And so the captions at the end can be gathered into a table of figures,
- 00:18 similar to a table of contents, with page number references.
- 00:22 So let's go ahead and find these, first of all.
- 00:23 They're on the References ribbon, way up on top.
- 00:26 We have Insert Caption, Insert Table of Figures,
- 00:29 'cause a picture is also a figure, and of course our Cross-reference options.
- 00:34 So let's go ahead and
- 00:34 click on the very first picture and we're gonna go to the Insert Caption button.
- 00:40 And when we click on that, now I can name this.
- 00:42 Now originally, I could type the word Figure, but
- 00:46 honestly I'm just gonna get rid of that.
- 00:47 I want this to be number 1.
- 00:49 It won't even let me change that to number 2.
- 00:51 Just gonna type Flower.
- 00:53 And if I want to exclude the word Figure,
- 00:56 see the label is called Figure, I can exclude that right here.
- 01:01 And please notice you have an option between Equation, Figure, Table,
- 01:05 I'll leave that on Figure.
- 01:06 The position can be below or above, I can have a new label,
- 01:09 I can change the numbering, I can auto-caption.
- 01:12 I'm gonna hit OK and watch what happens on the screen.
- 01:14 The other pictures fell in line underneath.
- 01:17 Okay, let's do this again.
- 01:18 Click on the next picture, hit Insert caption, I'm gonna call this desert, and
- 01:23 I'm gonna leave all the settings the same and hit OK.
- 01:26 And finally, I'm gonna click on this third one, Insert Caption, and
- 01:31 we're gonna call this Koala, all right, and hit OK.
- 01:35 Well, now what should I do with these?
- 01:36 Well, I can move them to different pages if I needed, but
- 01:39 no sense doing this if we don't cross-reference them.
- 01:42 So I'll go ahead and select this little line right here, and
- 01:45 I'm gonna choose Cross-reference.
- 01:47 Now, when I hit the Cross-reference, look what happens, it wants to number these.
- 01:52 So number, Numbered Item, Heading, Equation and
- 01:56 if I scroll down a little more, there it is, Figure.
- 01:59 Okay, click on Figure.
- 02:01 Now, I could have clicked through all these other items,
- 02:03 I don't have any footnotes, I don't have any bookmarks.
- 02:05 The only thing I have in this document is figures.
- 02:07 So I'm gonna cross-reference that particular spot with flower, and
- 02:11 I wanna insert it as a hyperlink.
- 02:13 And I want the entire caption or drop-down arrow, only the label,
- 02:17 only see, just click these drop-down arrows.
- 02:20 You'll become a better computer user 'cause you're exploring what can happen.
- 02:23 Now, this list stayed open.
- 02:25 So I'm gonna move that out of the way and do the next one.
- 02:28 Okay, double-click the next line.
- 02:30 I'm going to insert this one and this is going to link to desert.
- 02:34 So go ahead and hit desert and hit Insert, there we go.
- 02:38 I think I absolutely need a comma after that, and
- 02:41 then the last one is the koala picture, and link that to koala.
- 02:46 There we go, period behind that 'cause I'm a stickler for punctuation.
- 02:50 All right, I'm gonna go and close this.
- 02:52 So here we go, we're all done.
- 02:54 We've got our captions on our pictures.
- 02:56 We've got our cross-references set up.
- 02:58 Notice when I flip my mouse over that, it becomes a hyperlink.
- 03:02 So I can Ctrl+click to follow it, it takes me exactly to that caption.
- 03:07 Well, at the very end, we're going to put a list of figures, so
- 03:10 I'm gonna hit Ctrl+Enter to take me to the next page, Insert a Table of Figures.
- 03:15 When I click this, it's asking me all kinds of questions.
- 03:17 Do you want the page numbers?
- 03:18 Do you want them right align?
- 03:19 Yes, yes, yes.
- 03:20 From the template, caption label is my figures.
- 03:24 And I'm just gonna hit OK.
- 03:26 Please notice we have Options, we have Modify, so that means dig deeper,
- 03:29 see what else you can do in there.
- 03:31 I'm gonna hit OK and there we have it.
- 03:34 Sorta like the table of contents but it's not, it's just table of figures.
- 03:38 And it's basically referencing all the figures in your file.
- 03:41 There you go, I hope you use that, thanks.
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