Formal documents need a List of Figures and a List of Tables, in which the captions are exactly the same as the captions in the text and the page numbers are accurate, It is very difficult and time consuming to create these lists manually but Microsoft Word can create them automatically – if the captions have been automatically applied. This tip assumes you have previously formatted the captions.

Create a List of Figures

1. Insert an unnumbered heading, List of Figures, on a new page.
2. If necessary, remove any existing list of figures (which Microsoft calls a Table of Figures).
3. Put your cursor below it, where you want to place a list of the figures.
4. Go to References > Captions > Insert Table of Figures. The Table of Figures dialog box pops up.
   

   Table of Figures dialog box, showing the defaults

5. I accept all the defaults and just click on OK and I suggest you do the same. The defaults are:
   ___a. Show page numbers: Ticked.
   ___b. Right align page numbers: Ticked.
   ___c. Use hyperlinks instead of page numbers: Ticked.
   ___d. General: Use Formats From template.
   ___e. Caption label = Figure.
   ___f. Include label and number: Ticked.
6. A list of figures is inserted as a grey field. It may look something like the example below.
   

   A List of Figures with errors in the captions. The list is grey because it is a selected field

   ___a. Check it for errors. For example, note that the Figure 2.1 item has a space after the colon so that the caption is not in line with caption in the Figure 2.2 item below it.
   ___b. There is also a source citation included with the caption, which makes the item unnecessarily long.
   ___c. That means I did not follow steps 11 and 12 under the heading ‘Step 2: Format figure captions’ in the Format figure and table captions blog.
   ___d. It’s easy to fix:
   ______i. Just click or Ctrl+click on the caption in the List of Figures to go to the caption.
   _________1. Add a tab between the figure label and the caption wording (step 11).
   _________2. Insert a hidden paragraph break before the source (step 12).
   _________The result is shown below.

   

   Corrected caption. The space after the colon is replaced by a tab. The source in parentheses has a hidden paragraph mark before it (Ctrl+alt+Enter) and is not a caption style (see Format figure and table captions for more details)

   ______iii. Come back to the List of Figures, put your cursor somewhere in the list, and update it by pressing the F9 (function) key at the top of your keyboard. (If you are using a laptop, you need to hold down the Fn key while you press F9).
   ______iv. When asked, tell Word to update the ‘whole table’.
   ___e. This is what the updated List of Figures would look like.

   

   The updated List of Figures with the shorter, tabbed captions

7. Now format the items in the List of Figures. Go back to References > Captions > Insert Table of Figures. The Table of Figures dialog box pops up again (as shown in step 4 above).
8. Tick the Modify… button. The Style dialog box pops up with the Table of Figures style selected.
   

   The Style dialog box with Table of Figures selected

9. The Style dialog box also has a Modify… button. Click it to make the Modify Style dialog box pop up.
   

   The Modify Style dialog box showing the correct settings for the Table of Figures style.

10. Make sure ‘Style based on:” is set to TOC.
11. ‘Automatically update’ and ‘New document based on this template’
12. .
13. Then click on the Format button and select Paragraph in the submenu. The Paragraph dialog box pops up.
    

    Paragraph dialog box, with Table of Figures settings

    Make sure the settings are as follows according to the :
    ___a. Alignment: Click the ‘Left’ option.
    ___b. Indentation: Leave the Left at ‘0 cm’ and enter ‘0,75 cm’ for the Right. Together with a tab stop 0,2 cm inside the right margin, the right indent will ensure any long captions wrap to a new line without getting too close to the page number.
    ___c. Spacing – Before and After: Set them both to ‘6 pt’.
    ___d. Line spacing: Set the space between lines according to the client’s guidelines.
    ___e Tick ‘Don’t add space between paragraphs of the same style’.
    __

14. With your cursor in the list of figures, press the F9 key to update it to look more like Figure 9.

Create a List of Tables

Follow steps 1 to 6a under the heading ‘Create a List of Figures’, except that in 5e, the Caption label selected from the dropdown list should be ‘Table’.

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Published 28 April 2025
767 words