I love the "caption" function in MS Word, especially that it allows to update figure numbers automatically.

Now, I want to use the figure number as a text in paragraph for a statement like blah blah blah (see fig. xxx).

Can i link this xxx to a figure or caption, so that when the figure numbers are updated, this also gets updated?

Cheers,
Rahul

On the References tab, try Insert Cross reference > Reference type "Figure" and select the caption from the list.