Adding a caption corrupts all of the previous captions

[Just Michael]

I am trying to write a long document with many charts and captions.
Yesterday I inserted 8 charts with captions, and saved my doc. Today I added
a new chart, and a new caption.

The caption should say "Fig 3-9" (chapter 3, number 9; this is automated).
What it says is "Fig Error! Style not defined. -9"

It also changes ALL of the figure captions in my ENTIRE document to say the
same.

Any suggestions?

 

[Stefan Blom]

The error message indicates that Word cannot find the "chapter" style. Are
you sure that the correct style has been applied to text in the document?

 

[Just Michael]

Hi Stefan and thanks for the response.
I have only one Style called "Captions" (it is the original style that came
with the defuault doc template). The way that I create the caption is by
right-clicking on the chart and selecting "insert caption." After inserting
the caption, I can see from the Styles drop-down that "Caption" is the
selected Style.

I would send you a screen shot but apparently that is not possible.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

What Stefan meant is that Word cannot find any paragraphs in the style you
have selected for "Chapter starts with style" in the Caption Numbering
dialog (after checking the box for "Include chapter number").

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Just Michael]

Suzanne,
Thanks for the reply! So, how to solve the problem? I was previously just
adding captions by right-clicking on the chart. Now suddenly it does not
work. I'm not sure how to fix the situation, given what you told me.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Press Alt+F9 to view the field code for the caption. It will include a
StyleRef field that specifies the style it's looking for. If that's not the
style you're using for your chapter numbering, then you need to go to the
Caption Numbering dialog and choose another style. You can edit the captions
manually by typing in the style name.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Just Michael]

Thanks, I think I got it. I was confused when you said "style it's looking
for" because I have only one style for captions. But I then had to select
the specific paragraph style that contained the number sequence. Works fine
now.

 

[Stefan Blom]

Yes, Word always looks for a specific style--a built-in heading style--with
the chapter/page numbering option for captions.