I often need to change the position of all the captions of figures and tables in a document because the style guide I follow requires that all captions be placed above the respective figure/table. The only way I've managed to do this so far is by changing the position of each individual figure or table. Is my understanding correct that this cannot be done collectively — that is, by using one single command that applies to all the figures and tables in the document?

No, each item must be processed individually. A macro could be used to automate the process, though, provided there is a consistent relationship between the figures/tables and their captions.

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Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Many thanks for your quick reply. I was afraid there was no other easy way (I have no experience writing macros). Hopefully MS will add this functionality in a future version of Word; it would definitely be handy for editors.

Don't know whether this might help, but you could perhaps consider using your own styles for tableCaption and figureCaption instead of the 'caption' mechanism. Set the both of them to 'keep with next', I imagine.

Minor disclaimer: I've never, ever used the 'caption' mechanism, and my own documents have the table caption as the first row of the table.

Thanks for the suggestion! I don't think this duly addresses my problem though.