As Graham, Jezebel, and Jay have suggested in their various ways, it would
probably help you to understand what I've written if you would read Word's
Help and familiarize yourself with its terminology. I can also suggest this
MSKB article: "WD2000: General Information About Floating Objects" at
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=268713. You might also see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/DrwGrphcs/DrawLayer.htm
In Word 97 and earlier, MS used the term "float[ing] over text" to describe
objects in the drawing layer. When you inserted a picture, say, using Insert
| Picture | From File, the "Float over text" check box was checked by
default, and you had to clear it to insert the picture "inline." A
"floating" picture by default had "square" wrapping; other options were
Tight, Through, None, and Top and Bottom. You also had a choice of wrapping
text to both sides, left, right, or "largest side."
Word 2000 made significant changes in the way inserted/pasted pictures were
handled. The default "wrapping style" became In Line With Text (previously
called "inline"). An inline graphic is treated the same as text, that is,
rather like a large font character. Usually you would want it in a paragraph
by itself, with line spacing set to Auto; users come to grief inserting
pictures into paragraphs with Exact line spacing (so that only a tiny slice
of the bottom of the picture is displayed).
The new inline default confused many veteran Word users, too; previously
able to drag pictures freely around the page, they now found they could move
pictures only where there was already text. In order to solve this problem,
it is necessary to change the wrapping. In Word 2000 and above, when you
click on a graphic, the Picture toolbar is displayed. One of the buttons on
the toolbar is Text Wrapping (dog icon); this opens a menu allowing you to
change the wrapping of the object from In Line With Text to Square, Tight,
Behind Text, In Front of Text, etc.
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site:
http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
"Elmer" wrote in message
ps.com...
Suzanne S. Barnhill wrote:
Which is why it is especially frustrating that, if you use
Insert | Caption with a floating (wrapped) object selected, Word puts
the
caption in a text box (you'll need to either convert that to a frame or
pull
the text out, change the wrapping on the figure to In Line With Text,
and
insert both figure and caption in a single frame).
While you (and Jezebel) have been invaluable in this mini-lesson, the
above is so VERY recondite, I wonder if more than three people in the
entire world, the author of WORD included, knows exactly what it means
!
Some differences between frames and text boxes:
1. The text in a text box is always in the Normal style (though you can
change it to some other style after inserting the text box). Since a
frame
can be included in a paragraph style, you can use any style, and you can
insert the frame just by applying the style; for one use of this, see
http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/MarginalText.htm.
2. Both frames and text boxes have a border by default. To remove the
border
from a frame, you must use Format | Borders and Shading | None; to
remove
the border from a text box, you must use Format Text Box | Colors and
Lines
| No Line. If you want a border on a frame, you can have it on all or
specified sides, and you can use different borders (different style,
weight,
color) on different sides; a text box border is all or nothing, a box.
Ah, now this is a difference my pea brain can "wrap itself" around.
3. Frames can be positioned almost as precisely as text boxes (relative
to
page, column, margin, paragraph), but their wrapping limited to None
(inline) and Around (wrapped). Wrapping on text boxes can use any of the
styles available for any AutoShape or drawing object (Behind Text, In
Front
of Text, Square, Tight, etc.). What this means in practical terms is
that
you need a text box if you want to layer text over a picture, but a
frame is
what you need for a figure and its caption, which you are not likely to
want
to put in front of or behind text but do want to keep together and make
visible to the Table of Figures.
Back to tumbleweeds here. By "wrapping" do you mean "word wrapping?"
4. Text boxes, since they are in the drawing layer, are not visible in
Normal view. Frames are, but their positioning is not; that is, if they
are
wrapped, they will still appear inline.
Tumbling along with 'dem tumbling tumbleweeds....