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Colin Higbie
 
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Default Graphic Objects - Please Help

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