Microsoft Word for Dissertations

Word can automatically number the captions of your tables, figures and equations. The format of those captions is controlled by the Caption Style, and later in this section we describe how to modify that style to match the formatting requirements of your particular Style Guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc...).

The following video will show you how to insert objects such as pictures (figures) and charts. At the 1:40 point of the video, it discusses how to add captions to those objects. Despite the references to Word 2010, the information is still accurate.  

To add a caption to a figure, table, or other object:

1. Right-click the object you wish to caption and select Insert Caption…  from the pop-up menu.  To get this option for tables, you can hover your cursor over the table and right-click the  crosshair icon that appears at the top-left corner of the table.  
2. In the window that appears, select the label that applies to the object you have selected (e.g. “Figure” or “Table”) and select the position of the caption (above or below the object). You can click the "New Label..." button if you wish to create a different label (such as "Maps" or "Appendix Figures")
3. Type your text in the Caption: field. This field has a 250-character limit, so if your caption is longer than that, you should instead add it after you've inserted the caption – Step 6)
4. To include the chapter number in your caption (e.g. “Figure 3-2” or “Table 2.1”), you need to have set up your Heading 1 style first (see Automatic Chapter and Subsection Numbering), as we've done in our template. This is the only way Word understands which chapter you're in; otherwise, you will get an error. If you’ve done that, then:
   • Click the Numbering… button and check the Include Chapter Number box. Double-check to make sure it's getting the chapter number from Heading 1.
   • Select the separator (hyphen, comma, etc...) you wish to have between your chapter number and the caption number and click OK.
5. Click OK to exit the dialog box.
6. If you waited to enter a long caption, now you can type it in.

Word will renumber your captions appropriately if you insert a new figure before other figures in your document. 

All the captions in your document are styled with the Caption style, and that may not match what your Style Guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc...) calls for. If you do not like the appearance/formatting of your caption text, do not edit them one-by-one, but modify the Caption style instead (see Modifying a Style for more details). Word's default Caption style, for example, sets the captions to be a slate blue color, which you would likely prefer to be black. Also note that if you want your label & number to be Bold and the caption text to be Regular (e.g. "Figure 2.1: This is my caption"), then you will have to leave the Caption style set to Regular and then manually format the label & number as Bold yourself -- Word can't mix font settings within a caption, unfortunately.

Putting your caption on a line below the Table/Figure number

If your caption has to be on a different line from the figure number (as the APA7 style calls for), don't press Return/Enter after the figure number.  That places your caption in a new paragraph, and then your List of Tables/Figures won't know it's there.

Instead, use a Soft Return (or two) to move the caption text to another line. This keeps the caption number and caption text as one paragraph, so that Word will still pull the caption text into the List of Tables/Figures. 

With the invisible characters toggled on, you'll see that the Soft Return is a little right-angle arrow, as this image displays.

List of Figures/Tables/Equations

At some point after you've added a number of Figure or Table captions, you'll need to add a List of Figures or List of Tables to your frontmatter. Please refer to the List of Figures/Tables section of this Guide to learn how to create those.

In some disciplines, it’s not uncommon for many of your captions to be quite long. By default, the List of Figures/Tables tool will pull in the entire caption, making your List many pages long. Rackham doesn’t care how long your Lists are (we've seen Lists of Figures as long as 30 pages, due to those long captions!), but nevertheless, it may make sense to trim down excessive captions in the List.

How you do this depends on whether your computer is a Mac or a Windows machine.  In both cases, we’ll insert a character between the part of the long caption we want to have in the List of Figures and the part we don’t.

First, we’ll set Word to hide “hidden text” when showing “non-printing characters”.

Click OK or close the window to continue.

Make sure that you’ve toggled on the invisible characters (Home tab: ) to show all the non-printing characters in your document.

Next, we’ll place a hidden paragraph character between the part of the caption you wish to include in the List of Figures and the part you don’t:

1. In your caption, place your cursor just before the text you don’t wish to have in your List of Figures. 
2. Press Enter or Return on the keyboard, to put the text on a new paragraph
3. Carefully click and drag to select/highlight that new paragraph character you just inserted
4. (Mac) From the Format menu, select Font… 
   (Win) Right-click on the selected paragraph character and choose Font...
5. In the window that appears, check the Hidden checkbox
6. Click OK.

Now try toggling the invisibles off and on.  The caption will display as two separate paragraphs while the invisible characters are visible but will appear as a single paragraph when they're hidden. More importantly, the second paragraph will no longer be included when you generate or update your List of Figures.

Important Note:  Notice that when the paragraph marker is visible, it pushes the following text down a line as if it's a new paragraph. If you have several of these throughout a chapter, the cumulative effect could possibly push things onto different pages than they're on when those characters are hidden.  With this in mind, it's wise to toggle the invisibles  () to HIDE the non-printing characters before updating your Table of Contents or List of Figures/Tables/etc..., to be sure they are updated with the correct pages.