Hi all,

Currently in the process of writing a thesis. I have a table of figures that is linked to the figure caption of a number of pictures within the document.

My issue is that when I have a figure, the caption often reads something like "Figure 1: TITLE OF FIGURE. EXPLANATION OF FIGURE".

However what this means is that the figure explanation is recognised as part of the caption and updates into the table of figures at the start of the document. How do I remove the tags from sections of a caption so that they aren't recognised in the master table? I can edit the master table and delete the offending text but as soon as I update it, it all reappears.

I couldn't find any answers to this anywhere. Thanks for the help!

Hi Reece,

If your document has a heading or caption in which you want to include material that should not appear in the TOC or TOF, you can use a Style Separator (a form of hidden formatting) and two paragraphs in two different paragraph styles. To do this, put the portion that is to appear in the TOC or TOF into one paragraph, with the appropriate Style applied (the caption Style in this case), and the remainder in another paragraph with a different Style applied. Then place the cursor anywhere in the first paragraph and press Ctrl-Alt-Enter. Word will apply the Style Separator to the first paragraph mark it encounters, and the two paragraphs will appear to be one. For the second paragraph, you can use a Style that looks just like the heading/caption paragraph’s Style so they look the same.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Fantastic, thank you it worked perfectly!

EDIT: If I wanted to have my caption read like this:

Figure 2: Sleep spindle (left) and K-complex (right) waveforms in typical stage N2 sleep as seen on an EEG. Each vertical black line denotes 1-second of recording.

But have the TOF read like:
Figure 2: Sleep spindle and K-complex waveforms in typical stage N2 sleep as seen on an EEG.

how would I do this? I tried doing multiple style separators within the caption but it didn't work...

Hi Reece,

I've only just seen the edits to your last reply.

Basically, you can't do that. At the minimum, you would have to have: What you might do is input the caption as:
and have labels (eg textboxes over, or plain text under/above) the Sleep spindle and K-complex waveforms, so that readers would know which is which.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]