Word – Microsoft Word: Table of Figures Ordering

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I'm currently working on a report but for whatever reason, when creating a table of figures to go with the images, Microsoft Word gets the ordering wrong:

http://puu.sh/5xWsy/0ee1dd057b.png

I'm not entirely sure why this happens, and I've tried re-adding the images and re-adding captions but it keeps happening. It seems a little silly that Microsoft Word can't even count.

Best Answer

I have been trying to reproduce the problems faced by the OP using Word 2007. Using standard Caption options (e.g. both picture and text are aligned to text, and are not free-standing), I could only reproduce the problem when the pictures and/or the text was boxed. By experience I know this problem occurs sometimes, mostly when copy-pasting parts from different documents, but it is difficult to reproduce.

To reproduce the problem:

  1. Create a document with some images. For this purpose, I used sample artwork from ClipArt.

  2. Change the text molding to Square (i.e. to make it so you can move the pictures to where you want)

  3. Add captions. The captions will also be in text boxes.

  4. Create the Table Of Figures (TOF).

  5. Stretch the 2nd picture box.

The TOF has now the reversed order for the captions.

To fix this, do the following:

  1. Select one of the reversed captions' textbox.

  2. Select the numbering, then right-click.

  3. Refresh/actualize the field. This will make the 2nd caption 1st, as indicated in the TOF.

  4. Do the same for the other box.

  5. Refresh the TOF. t should show that the stretched caption is 1st, followed by the unstretched one.

With this all you can maybe stretch the textbox of Figure 1, with a transparent background, and refresh the TOF. This should fix it.

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