How can I position pictures when I am using vertical centering for my text?
When I insert clip arts and move them where I want them, they jump around and
even disappear. If I take off the vertical alignment they stay where I put
them. I want the text vertically centered on the page, but do not want this
to make my clip arts jump around. How can I do this?
There is an interesting problem (in Word 2000 and Word 2002 SP2 at
least) with Center Vertical Alignment interacting with floating
objects such as pictures. If you insert a floating graphic, you may
find that it pushes the insertion point upward!
If the graphic vertical alignment is set relative to page and Page
Setup is set for center alignment, the following rules seem to apply:
(Similar strange behavior happens for bottom alignment.)
If you type a vertical position into Format AutoShape | Layout |
Advanced, the measurement is interpreted relative to the current top
of the body text, not relative to the top of the page as you would
expect, and not relative to the center of the page as your second
guess might be.
If you drag the graphic and release it, Word reads the vertical
position relative to the (real) top of the page and enters that number
into the box. It then interprets that number relative to the current
top of text and positions the graphic accordingly! The resulting
behavior is quite startling. The bottom line is that dragging into
position is hopeless. Of course this includes the dragging involved in
drawing the object if you are using the drawing tools.
If you set vertical position relative to the text anchor instead of
relative to the page and type in a number, everything works. However,
if you then click the radio button to change the position into
"relative to page", Word again reads the box position on the screen as
relative to the real page and enters the number and interprets it as
relative to current top of text.
So the reason that the text and insertion point jump upward is that
when you let go of the mouse button when drawing a graphic, Word
measures the position of the graphic relative to the real page (i.e.
some inches below the top of page) and interprets that measurement as
relative to the top of text i.e. your paragraph, so the graphic ends
up below the paragraph. Word then centers the combination of paragraph
and graphic on the page. Since the graphic was below the paragraph and
the combination had to be centered, the paragraph had to move up.
You can work around it by setting Format AutoShape | Layout | Advanced
| "Move object with text" and typing a number into the box. This makes
the vertical position relative to the anchor paragraph instead of
relative to the page. As your text moves the graphic will move, which
may or may not be convenient. Whatever you do, don't drag.
Bob S
