[me13013]

I have a Word document (a thesis for school), with about 20 figures
and tables among 80 pages. I would like the figures/'tables, with
their captions, to align to the bottom of the nearest page to where
they are referenced from (actually, I will gladly settle for aligning
to the bottom of *any* page; doesn't have to be the nearest).
Further, each of my captions includes a named bookmark which covers
the text of the figure number. I then insert a cross-refence to the
bookmark's text when I want to reference the figure from several
places in the document, and to the page of the bookmark's text to
create an entry in my table of figures.

I have found one method for aligning figure+caption but this method
deletes my bookmark. The method is as follows. (1) I select the
figure and text, (2) insert text box, and (3) edit the properties of
the text box so that it binds to the bottom of a page. This method
works great with one HUGE (and confounding) exception. The bookmark
that is inside the text box is gone. It no longer appears in any list
of bookmarks, and any cross references to it says something like
"reference to non-existent bookmark" (well, it says that once I update
fields, which I will need to do eventually, so this is an untenable
"solution").

At present it seems my best option is essentially to align the text by
hand (the document is 'finished', in that I don't need to make any
more text changes to it). This is exceedingly tedious and then I also
have problems with getting Word to properly justify text in the
paragraphs that I have to split to stick the figures in the right
place. I am using left and right justify, and when I split a
paragraph I need the bottom line of the top half to justify right and
left, but I can't see any way to convince Word to do that either
(other than to manually insert a bunch of spaces).

Anyone know of another way to do this? Surely this isn't an unusual
use/need/desire. Surely Word must have a way to do this.

Bob H