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Shauna Kelly
 
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Hi Colin

I share much of your frustration. But the more I understand what's going on
behind the scenes, the more I can control at least some of it.

First, a graphic can be either floating (meaning it has an anchor, and you
can drag it easily) or it can be in-line (so it behaves like one big
character). For more on this, see
The draw layer: a metaphysical space
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/DrwGrphcs/DrawLayer.htm

In-line graphics are always easier to handle. They don't slip and slide
around the place quite like floating ones do. So unless you explicitly need
to wrap text around a graphic, use in-line graphics.

Second, different versions of Word paste graphics, by default, in different
ways. In Word 2000 they're all pasted, by default, as floating. So every
time I paste in a graphic in Word 2000, I double-click the graphic, click
the Layout tab, and change it to In Line with Text. In Word 2002 and 2003
you have some control over the default pasting at Tools Options Edit.

Finally, for floating graphics, the anchors are the key. Always make sure
you can see them by doing Tools Options View and ticking Object Anchors.
And always make sure the anchors are attached to an appropriate paragraph.
Word will try anything it can to get a picture and its anchor on the same
page. So there is, in effect, a two-step process. (1) Anchor the graphic to
the right paragraph by dragging the anchor. (2) Positon the graphic
appropriately. If dragging isn't achieving what you need, double-click the
graphic, choose the Layout tab and click Advanced.

Objects in the middle of a paragraph also seem to break the No
Widow/Orphan feature.

Yes, I've seen that before. I think it was fixed in Word 2003.

There are other articles listed at
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/DrwGrphcs/index.htm that might also help.

Hope this helps.

Shauna Kelly. Microsoft MVP.
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word


"Colin Higbie" wrote in message
...
I don't understand how Word places graphic objects. It seems random, but
I'm sure there's a pattern to the madness. If anyone could explain it to me
in a way I could use, I'd really appreciate it. I'm going crazy trying to
work with it.

Sometimes, I see the anchor for an object when I select it, so I can drag
that to assign it to other paragraphs. Other times, there is no anchor.
Sometimes when I drag an object to a location, it bounces to another page.
It rarely goes where I put it.

This is made worse by the fact that when I drag the object, the dotted
outline suggests it will go in a certain place, but then when I release
the mouse, it disappears and I have to scroll around through the pages to
find where it went. I think it's always within a page of where I put it.

Objects in the middle of a paragraph also seem to break the No
Widow/Orphan feature. A paragraph with an object in the middle may well
have a single isolated line at the bottom of a page (right above the
graphic) or the top of the following page (widow or orphan). It doesn't
seem to matter how I set the Advanced Layout options are for Text
Wrapping.

Is there a way to predict or stabilize this behavior? What is the logic
behind this chaotic and annoying behavior? If there are no good answers to
these questions, can we expect that these bugs (as far as I'm concerned
that's what these are) will be fixed in the next version of Word? I guess
if MS hasn't gotten it right in 10 years of making Word for Windows, they
aren't likely to start now.

It seems like Word isn't really meant to work with anything but text. I
know it's not a real layout program like Quark or InDesign, but embedding
a basic Excel table or Visio diagram should work. WordPerfect has no
problem performing these basic functions.

Thanks for any help,
Colin