Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Turning Off Automatic Captioning.

Turning Off Automatic Captioning

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated March 11, 2026)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021

If you previously turned on the automatic captioning feature of Word, you can turn it off by following these steps:

Display References tab of the ribbon.
Click the Insert Caption tool in the Captions group. Word displays the Caption dialog box.
Click on the AutoCaption button. Word displays the AutoCaption dialog box. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The AutoCaption dialog box.

Search through the list of objects, removing checkmarks from those for which you no longer want captions.
Click on OK.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (11982) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Turning Off Automatic Captioning.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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