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OpenOffice Writer 3.x Guide
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Adding a caption

You can easily add a caption to any table. Writer will keep track of all your captioned tables, automatically number them, and update any links to them.

To add a caption to a table:

  1. Place the cursor in the table.
  2. Right-click and select Caption from the pop-up menu. Alternatively, the Insert > Caption menu option becomes available whenever your cursor is inside a table cell.
  3. Enter the text for your caption, your category selection, the numbering style, separator, and position (above or below the table).
  4. Click OK.
Image:documentation_note.png Once the category, numbering style and separator are established in the Caption dialog box, you can edit them in the document if you choose. However, doing so may damage the automatic numbering and reference links. If you need to establish the numbering and reference link for the caption, you can choose to leave your caption blank in the Caption dialog box and add it later.

Writer supplies five different category labels for captions: <None>, Drawing, Table, Illustration, and Text.

You can also create your own category labels, formating, and separators. For example, you might want your tables to be labeled as Fantasia, formatted with roman numerals, and using a period (‘.’) as a separator, as follows:

Fantasia I. Interesting data

Fantasia II. More interesting data

Fantasia III. Yet more interesting data

To accomplish this:

  1. Open the Caption dialog box following the instructions above.
  2. In the Category field, select the text and type the word Fantasia.
  3. In the Numbering drop-down, select the Roman (I II III) option.
  4. In the Separator field, select the text and type a period (.) followed by a space.
Image:documentation_note.png OOo will use exactly what you type into the Category and Separator fields, so be sure to include any additional spaces or punctuation you want to see in your caption.

Additional options for numbering captions by chapter are available under the Options button in the Captions dialog box. Some of these settings which refer to the outline level will only have an effect if you are using outline level paragraph styles on the chapter headings within your document. See Chapter 7 (Working With Styles) for information.

By adding chapter numbers to your captions, OOo will restart the caption numbering for each chapter it encounters. For example, if the last figure caption you create in chapter 1 is Figure 1.15, and the next figure caption you create is in chapter 2, the numbering will start over at Figure 2.1.

Options available to chapter numbering for captions include the following:

  • Use Level to specify the outline levels that triggers a restart of the numbering as well as how many levels of outline numbering are shown before the table number. An example may be useful. Suppose your document uses Heading 1 style for chapters and Heading 2 style for sub-headings, and that this is how you set up your outline numbering. If you want all the tables in a chapter (that is, between two Heading 1 paragraphs) to be numbered sequentially independently of the sub heading they are under, select 1 as Level. If instead you want to restart the numbering at each sub-heading select level 2.
  • Use the Separator field to establish the separator between the chapter number and figure number.
  • Use Character style to set a character style for the caption. This is useful if the separator of your choice is not a symbol included in the default font type of your document or if you want the caption to have a special color, size and so on.
  • The Apply border and shadow option does not apply to table captions. OOo normally wraps the objects you can add a caption to in a frame, but not for tables.
  • Use Caption order to specify whether you want the category or numbering to appear first in the caption.

All of the features described above can also be set up to automatically apply to any new tables you create in your document.

To automatically caption all your tables:

  1. Place the cursor in a table.
  2. Right-click and select Caption from the pop-up menu.
  3. Select AutoCaption.
  4. Select OpenOffice.org Writer Table and select the settings you want and click OK. This dialog box is covered in more detail in Chapter 2 (Setting up Writer).

When AutoCaption is enabled for tables, any new tables will be captioned according to your selections in the AutoCaption dialog box; however, you will need to add the specific text for each caption onto the table manually.


OpenOffice Writer 3.x Guide
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