I am desperately trying to get a simple result from captions, and am on my third hour of dead-ends...

The result I am attempting to achieve:

Figure 1: This is the caption title. This is the body of text for the caption.

Note the "Figure 1" is bold, and the text is not, but the "This is the caption title." is part of the caption so that it will be displayed in the list of figures.

What will be shown in the list of figures:

Figure 1: This is the caption title.

What this comes down to is applying two styles for one caption - is this even possible?

What you can do is change the Caption Style, which is a paragraph Style, to 'not bold' (i.e. regular text), then apply the 'Strong' character Style to the "Figure 1".

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

Can you elaborate on how to do that?

Any style change to the caption affects the entire caption.

In the example I gave, "Figure 1: This is the caption title." is the caption. If I change the style of "Figure 1", it changes the style for the entire line, as well.

That's the whole point of what I advised.

You said you didn't want the text to be bold. That means making it regular text. You do that by changing the Caption Style which is a paragraph Style.

Then you apply the Strong Style to the Figure # for each caption. The Strong Style, being a character Style, only applies to the selected text.

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

I think you are misunderstanding the initial question.

Under the picture there is a caption that needs to be included into the list of figures. This caption consists of three components:

1. Figure #

2. Figure title.

3. Figure text.

The list of figures needs to include figure # and figure title.

I make a caption and have it include figure # and figure title, then put a style separator between the figure title and figure text so that they are inline.

Any change made to either the figure # or figure title affects BOTH the figure # and figure title, as they are the same style as dictated by being the caption.

Does that make more sense?

It's a bit rich saying I haven't understood the initial question when you haven't paid attention to the answer. You quite obviously haven't tried the advice you've been given.
Your point being?

Instead of wasting my time, how about trying the advice you've been given...

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