Caption Numbering connected with various heading styles

[Joseph Talbott]

I am working on a document with many (100+) figures with captions that are
located in various chapters, sections and subsections. I don't have a problem
numbering the caption automatically with the appropriate heading level but
when I adjust the caption heading level in the caption dialog box (e.g. from
H3 to H4) all of my previously created H3 headings are changed to H4 level
headings. In shorter documents I have simply gone back and adjusted the \s 4
to \s 3 (or as appropriate) after completing the document but that is getting
rather tedious with the large number of figures that I am adding.
Is there an easy way to turn off the automatic updating of my previous
caption levels. I have already toggled the auto updating of fields off as I
want to control all updates. Do I need to set a caption style for each level
desired? And will this solve the problem without introducing other problems
when I build my list of figures?

 

[Joseph Talbott]

I forgot to add that I am working with MS Word 2003 in a Windows XP Pro
environment.