Text box questions

[Joy]

I think I used to be able to do this with Word 97, but I am working with
Word 2003 now, and find it harder to use. I have copied and pasted 4 .jpg
pictures on a page, making a .doc out of them, and am able to move them
around where I want them with the picture (taskbar?) that appears when I
highlight the picture. Now I want to put a text caption underneath each
picture and cannot figure out how to do it. A single click on the Task Box
icon on the Drawing bar gives me a huge box that says Create Your Drawing
Here. A second click inside that give me a Text Box inside the big box. I
can resize that box and type in it, but when I click again to get rid of the
box, everything disappears, including the text! I guess I need some
step-by-step directions, because I do not find the MS Word Help to be very
clear at all. Thanks!

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

For working with text boxes, you might find things a bit less confusing if
you turn off the Drawing Canvas (the "huge box that says Create Your Drawing
Here"). To turn that off, choose Tools - Options - General, and remove the
check next to "Automatically crate drawing canvas when inserting
AutoShapes".

That aside, for captioning pictures, I often find that it's easiest to use a
table. For 4 pictures, for example, if they're appearing as a 2x2 matrix, I
would create a 4x2 table, putting the pictures into row 1 and row 3, and
putting the respective captions into row 2 and row 4. To futher uncomplicate
matters, I would set the pictures to In Line with Text, so that they'd go
willingly into the table.

 

[Joy]

Thanks, Herb. That turning off Drawing Canvas worked well! As for the rest
of it, I'm dealing with a variety of shapes and sizes of pictures. I'm
writing a story about my childhood memories, and scanning in individual pics
to insert in pages between text pages; just wanted to identify each pic.
It's coming along, but slowly!

 

[Joy]

I tried sending this once, and got an error message, so I'll try again:


Thanks, Herb. That turning off Drawing Canvas worked well! As for the rest
of it, I'm dealing with a variety of shapes and sizes of pictures. I'm
writing a story about my childhood memories, and scanning in individual pics
to insert in pages between text pages; just wanted to identify each pic.
It's coming along, but slowly!

For working with text boxes, you might find things a bit less confusing if
you turn off the Drawing Canvas (the "huge box that says Create Your
Drawing Here"). To turn that off, choose Tools - Options - General, and
remove the check next to "Automatically crate drawing canvas when
inserting AutoShapes".

That aside, for captioning pictures, I often find that it's easiest to use
a table. For 4 pictures, for example, if they're appearing as a 2x2
matrix, I would create a 4x2 table, putting the pictures into row 1 and
row 3, and putting the respective captions into row 2 and row 4. To futher
uncomplicate matters, I would set the pictures to In Line with Text, so
that they'd go willingly into the table.

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

Both came through fine. I find that most of those error messages are bogus.
Good luck!