It Figures

When you have a long document with several figures, you can create a Table of Figures to get to each one quickly. In Word 2010, it’s easy to create a Table of Figures, and this guide will show you how to do just that.

First, of course, you need some figures.

They can be photos:

Figure 1. Rainbow outside my house

They can be illustrations:

Figure 2. Revenues are moving up.

They can be charts:

Figure 3. Meaningful data to somebody

Just about anything you may need to illustrate a point.  Got the picture?

Figure 4. Happy face with a camera

The next step is to identify the figures.  To do that, make sure the figures, pictures, charts, etc. have captions.  When you insert the figure, you can right-click on it and from the context menu, select Insert Caption...

Figure 5. Context menu after right-clicking picture

After that, you can give your figure a caption and do other things with it as well.

Figure 6. This pops up after you choose "Insert Caption..."

Finally, after your figures all have captions, you can create a Table of Figures.  Go to where you want the table in the document, such as after the Table of Contents. Then go to the References tab, and in the Captions group you’ll find Insert Table of Figures, which you can click and the following window will pop up, giving you many choices.

Figure 7. It's easy to create a Table of Figures

The default will probably be okay most of the time, but as you use this more often, you’ll find things that will more suit your own style. Enjoy!

Figure 8. Have fun, and don't worry about getting messy as you practice!