Mark a table caption as ‘Continued’ (Word 2000 SP3)

Topic

New Reply

What I’m looking for is away to repeat a table caption for large tables that span several pages. The first instance of the caption would be normal, for example, “Table 1-1 PLC Inputs”, the caption on the subsequent pages would be something like “Table 1-1 PLC Inputs (continued)”. I have managed to get the caption to repeat without the “(continued)” by inserting the caption into the first row of the table above the heading row and mark both rows as “Heading Rows Repeat”. I know I could do it by breaking the table up into page size chunks and adjusting the fields for the caption to retain the numbers as well as adding the “continued” string, but thats a lot of work and the tables tend to grow and shrink. I saw the thread about doing something similar with figure captions and that got me thinking about how to do it with tables.

Anybody?

Reply | Quote

Replies

There isn’t an easy way to do this. You could add your vote for a wish to include this feature by writing a mail to mswish@microsoft.com (include “Word” in the mail header).

Bill Coan has posted a work-around:
[indent]

---

There is a workaround available if you’re willing to put some effort into it.

The technique is this:

1. Put the word “continued” into the heading row at the top of the table.
2. Anchor a textbox or a drawing rectangle to the paragraph immediately preceding the table, then lock the anchor in place, so it remains outside the table, and then and only then drag the textbox or rectangle over the word “continued.” This will hide the word on the first page of the table but if the table laps over to additional pages, the textbox/rectangle will not be repeated because it belongs to the paragraph immediately above the table, rather than to the heading row.

---

[/indent]
Klaus

Reply | Quote

Cool hadn’t thought of it like that!
Make the caption have the “continued” in it from the start and hide it on the first instance rather than try to add it to the succeeding instances. Yep, always easier to take away than add. I’ll give it a try when I get to work on Monday.

Reply | Quote

OK, I tried Bill’s suggested workaround and it works great when you view the document in Page Layout view or print it.

However, there is a problem if you update the Table of Tables (TOT), the “(Continued)” shows up as part of the caption, which is should, since it is. Its just that it makes the TOT look peculiar. If you have built the TOT before adding the “(Continued)” and just update the page numbers, that’s OK. It just will make future revisions difficult if you need to refresh the TOT completely.

So, the workaround works but there is a side-effect that one has to deal with, maybe. Anybody have an approach to avoid the TOT problem?

Reply | Quote

You can format a return following your table caption as ‘hidden’, then put in the word (Continued) using another style that’s the same font & spacing as your caption. When the TOT is run, it will look no further than the hidden return following your caption. I’ve done this with captions that are too wordy for a TOT.

Reply | Quote

By a “return”, do you mean a carriage return from pressing the Enter key? Or is it a “soft” return from hitting Shift+Enter? Or something else?

Also doesn’t this make the caption appear on two lines?

Reply | Quote

I just tested this wonderful Klaus-Nancy workaround and it works beautifully. I’ve also had a need to do this with table captions and was going to ask the same question myself.
The “return” Nancy mentions is a press of the Enter key. Select the paragraph mark that results, and format it as Hidden text through the Font dialog.
I found that if I added a space before the hidden “return”, I got a better result (the two parts of the caption didn’t run together).
The caption will in fact appear on two lines in Normal and Print Layout views, but Word is lying to you. You’ll notice that Print Preview correctly shows it all on one line.

Reply | Quote

Clarification to my previous post: The caption will appear to be on two lines in Normal and Print Layout views only if you have specified hidden text to display (Tools-Options-View tab (Formatting marks)-Hidden Text). If you don’t specify hidden text to display, the Normal and Print Layout views will correctly show the entire caption on one line as it should.

Reply | Quote

Hi Nancy:
That’s a neat trick. However, why do you create a new style for the “continued” text? I find that it won’t show up in the TOF (or TOT) using the same caption style.

Kevin: Did you find that you had to create a separate style?

Reply | Quote

It didn’t seem that creating a separate matching style made any difference. But my situation may have been different in that I already had the “(continued)” in the captions from trying the first suggestion where I needed them and I just inserted a carriage return in front of it. I think when you do that the text retains the Caption formatting but not the style?

If you were doing it from scratch and hit Enter after the main part of the caption you would get whatever Style was defined to follow the Caption style for the next paragraph and then you would have to format it to match. That’s probably when a defined Style would be helpful.

Reply | Quote

Hi Kevin:
Actually, if you place the cursor in the middle of a caption styled sentence & press enter, both paragraphs are now in the Caption style, regardless of what style is set to follow the Caption style. But I see that you could either develop an identically formatted style or use the Caption style following the hidden paragraph mark.
Cheers,

Reply | Quote