Nudging picture + text box damages line spacing

[Peter Payzant]

Hi, all-

I'm trying to use a text box to hold a caption for a picture. When I select
the two of them together and "nudge" them as a unit, the line spacing of the
paragraph they are in changes. Here's more detail:

First, I'm using Word 2000 SP3.

To observe this behaviour

1. Create or open a document with about a page of text.
2. Insert a smallish picture from a file, say about 1/4 of a page wide.
3. Open the Format Object menu. Under Layout, Wrapping choose Square or
Tight.
4. Under Layout, Advanced clear all the Options check boxes.
5. Insert a Text Box below the picture, positioning it close to the picture
as if it were a caption, and give it the same layout options as the picture.
6. Select the text box, and then shift-click on the picture to select it as
well.
7. Nudge the pair up or down with the arrow keys.

You should see the line spacing of the paragraph vary dramatically as the
nudged pair move up and down the document.

Am I doing something wrong? Is there some better way to add a caption to a
photo with all the control that a text box gives?

Regards

Peter Payzant
(e-mail address removed) <- make the obvious change

 

[garfield-n-odie]

Select the picture and text box together, and then group them (right
click on the picture, left click on Grouping | Group ). You might have
to reapply your layout preferences to the grouped object. That should
fix the paragraph spacing problem when you nudge.

Note that if you put your figure captions in text boxes, you won't be
able to automatically generate a list of figures from Insert | Index.
If this is something you need to do, you would be better off using
frames instead of text boxes.

 

[Peter Payzant]

Hi-

Thanks! That seems to have done the trick. Fortunately generating a list of
figures is not required for this project, so I can stay with text boxes.

Your point about reapplying layout preferences is important. In some cases,
I get the dreaded behaviour where the new object jumps to the physical top
of the page, and all subsequent nudging just moves it further and further
off the page. When this happens, it seems the only solution is to drag it to
somewhere near the middle of the page and then reapply the layout. Strange!

Anyway, thanks again for solving this one.

Peter Payzant

(e-mail address removed) <- make the obvious change