Befuddled by layout for text, text box and pics--Word 2007

[W. eWatson]

I seem to be playing pinball with the elements of my Word doc. Without
any pix or text boxes it consists of a 14 pt, centered, bold title.
Following it is a about five paragraphs. It all looks fine. If I add two
small pix of the same size, and try to put a text box below them, things
get weird. For example, the title occupies one page, or it occupies the
first page along with a pic and text box. Below the box there is no
following text, although there's plenty of room. It starts again on the
next page. When I move one of the pix, sometimes it jumps on top of the
other one despite the fact I'm trying to place it on another page.
Sometimes the four items (2 pix, and 2 boxes) show up in odd places, and
text lines get indented in odd ways. I'm using tight formatting on all
four. Each item is reduced to 50% of its size.

At the moment, I more or less have things under control, but if I
attempt to change the location of a pic, I'm sure the pinball effect
will appear again. There must be some way to control this or view it in
such a way that I have a clue to what's happening. Comments?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Are you needing to wrap text around the pictures and text box? If not,
insert them (the pictures, anyway) In Line With Text, and then they will
stay put.
If your intent in inserting the pictures and text box is to have two
pictures side by side with a caption below them, your best bet would be to
insert a 2x2 table, put the pictures in the top row and merge the cells in
the bottom row for the text.

From the fact that you are using Tight wrapping, however, it is clear that
you do need to wrap text around the objects. The main thing to know about
any wrapped object is that it is anchored to a text paragraph and will
always stay on the same page as that paragraph. You can define its position
on that page, but you can't specify the page. You can also move the anchor
to a different paragraph (in order to keep it on a given page), and you can,
if you prefer, specify its position relative to that paragraph (though if
you drag it, you will be changing the position specs).

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

 

[W. eWatson]

OK,that's good. I presume the text box anchors the same way as pics.

What is really creepy about this article is what happens to the title of
the article. It's supposed to be the first text line on page 1, and it
is. However, the first paragraph of text starts on page 2. If I try to
delete whatever is before the first word on page 2, The title is the
first thing on page 1, as expected, but the first words of the first
paragraph are on the same line. The first paragraph continues as
expected except the left margin is uneven. Part of the last line of the
paragraph is indented about 20 spaces. This indented last line appears
for all subsequent paragraphs if it must be folded onto the next line.

That is, I get this.

Hello, how are you today? This is going to be a long line|<-fold point.
that suddenly becomes indented.

I'm on the following para...ph. No problem. This "last" line fits.

Sometimes when I cut and paste a picture, the text in the spot where it
was cut is empty and the text around it is not collapsed.

Yikes!

 

[W. eWatson]

Well, I finally copied the text into a txt file, and then reassembled
everything into a new Word doc, pix, text boxes (caption labels w/o the
#s), and it now looks fit to proceed. That is, I'm virtually finished.

Somehow I think the first version got perturbed with all the pic and
text boxes I moved around freely.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You'll find this much easier to work with if you have nonprinting characters
displayed (at minimum). Clearly, if you delete the paragraph mark at the end
of the title, then the two paragraphs will become one. Your last line isn't
"indented"; it's centered (because your title paragraph is centered). The
reason the first paragraph of text starts of page 2 is likely that it is
formatted as "Page break before" or "Keep with next."

You can define the "Distance from text" of all your wrapped objects, and
that may help you position them more satisfactorily.

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

 

[W. eWatson]

You'll find this much easier to work with if you have nonprinting
characters displayed (at minimum). Clearly, if you delete the paragraph
mark at the end of the title, then the two paragraphs will become one.
Your last line isn't "indented"; it's centered (because your title
paragraph is centered). The reason the first paragraph of text starts of
page 2 is likely that it is formatted as "Page break before" or "Keep
with next."

You can define the "Distance from text" of all your wrapped objects, and
that may help you position them more satisfactorily.

How do I display non-printing characters? Where would a "keep with next"
come from? What option or operation?

I've added more to the doc, and it is working fine; however, the pics
with a caption label (text body) are a bit off. I use tight for the pic.
They appear OK except that the text to the right of the pair has a blank
line right about where the two are flush. For example:

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

For nonprinting characters, see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/NonPrintChars.htm. Note the "text
wrapping break," which you might find useful.

"Keep with next" is one of several text flow options found on the Line and
Page Breaks tab of the Paragraph dialog. If you have many paragraphs with
"Keep with next" applied, then they will stick together until they reach a
paragraph that does not have this property, and a page break will fall after
that paragraph. Word's built-in heading styles all have this property. An
easy way to tell whether a paragraph has any of the text flow properties
applied is to assign toolbar buttons for them (see
http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/CustomToolbar.htm).

If you have pictures with a caption, the easiest way to keep them together
and still wrap text around them is to put both together in a frame. You can
have only the equivalent of Square wrapping on the frame (frame wrapping is
binary: wrapped or not), but this will be adequate for most figure/caption
combinations.

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

 

[W. eWatson]

Frames? Do you mean something like a one cell table?
I think I need to borrow a book from the local library to get a handle
on some of this.

Thanks for your help.

 

[W. eWatson]

This is fairly disappointing. I thought I'd try to put an image and a
caption in a single cell table. It more or less went OK, but controlling
the result so the cell boundary was shrunk to leave no space around the
cell borders was a bit tricky, in fact, I didn't quite succeed. I
couldn't get the lower border to pull up and not leave space between it
and the caption. I had reduce the border margins to zero.

I would have guessed that such a need would be simply addressed in Word.
That is, there would be an option that simply does the collapse the cell
to the appropriate size to fit snugly around the two items in it.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You can certainly reduce the cell margins to zero all the way around (Table
Properties | Table | Options). If your paragraph has Spacing After, there's
still going to be some space.

Inserting a frame in Word 2007 is a bit tricky, as there's no longer a
straightforward way to access the command unless you add the Horizontal
Frame command to your QAT. There is an Insert Frame button on the Legacy
Forms toolbar on the Developer tab (if you have that enabled). The frame
will fit the contents snugly, but there will be some space around it. This
is controlled by the "Distance from text" setting in the Format Frame
dialog, but, unlike for text boxes and other objects, there's just a single
setting for all four sides. Also, a frame by default has a border, which
must be removed.

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