Figure Captions Change Incorrectly

Peter is having trouble with captions. When he puts two pictures side by side with captions under each, the numbering changes. For example, pictures A and B are side by side on the same page. If he adds a caption to A (Figure 1-1) and then to B (Figure 1-2), A becomes Figure 1-2 and B Figure 1-1 after updating. Peter doesn't want to "freeze" the captions, as they need to be dynamic. He wonders how to get the correct captions to be used.

It is important to remember that pictures (images) can be inserted in your document either inline or "floating." If your images are inline, then there should be no problem. However, it sounds like Peter's images are floating, meaning text wraps around them.

In this case, it is important to understand where the images are anchored. You can see this by clicking on the Show/Hide tool on the Home tab of the ribbon. When you click on an image to select it, you should be able to see an anchor icon indicating where the image is anchored. In side-by-side images, if your right image is anchored at a position that is before the anchor for the left image, then as far as Word is concerned, the right image occurs before the left image, and it will caption them accordingly. In other words, it is the anchors—not the actual images—that indicate, to Word, the sequence in which the images occur.

The solution in this case is to simply make sure the anchors occur in the order in which you want the images to be handled by Word. Make the adjustment, update the fields, and you should be good to go.

If that doesn't work for you (though it should), consider putting your images and their captions into either a text box or a simple single-row table. That should help make your desired placement very evident to Word.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (8480) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365.