How to Wrap Text Around an Image in Google Draw
Scott Henning
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Jun 20, 2002, 1:33:51 AM 6/20/02
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Over the past five or more years working with Word, both Win and Mac, I have
had problems with floating objects. Especially in long reports, as I try to
position objects, they will frequently get "stuck" to the top of the page,
appear on different pages, or disappear altogether. This problem has
persisted through many versions of Word, and I know that others experience
the same thing.
I am just wondering if Microsoft is planning on addressing this issue soon?
Thanks,
Scott Henning
Beth Rosengard
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Jun 20, 2002, 5:21:56 AM 6/20/02
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Hi Scott,
The key is to designate these objects as Inline with Text so that they are
no longer floating objects.
You may find the following explanation/suggestions by John McGhie helpful.
They were given in response to a question about keeping captions with
graphics.
- - - - - - - -
Word enables you to format pictures with a wide variety of "wrapping
styles". These are useful if you only have two or three pages to do and
plenty of time. You can achieve all sorts of wonderful effect with text
wrapping around the graphics and so forth.
The effect is that the picture floats independently of the text, either
above it or below it. You can think of a Word document as a three layer
sandwich: there are two "drawing" layers, one behind the text layer, the
other in front of it. This is great for desktop publishing effects, but
makes the document very hard to maintain. Using the Lock Anchor and Move
With Text buttons on the Format>Picture dialog, you can achieve quite a deal
of control over the effects, but it's a lot of work.
For long documents, they are more trouble than they are worth.
If you Format>Picture>Layout and set Wrapping Style to Inline With Text,
your picture is then inserted in the Text layer. It behaves like a single
very large character. Word expands the line height to contain the picture,
and the picture can no longer move independently of the text.
Format the paragraph you put the picture on as Keep With Next. It pays to
put the pic on a paragraph of its own: you can then use the paragraph
properties to centre the picture in the text column and to arrange space
before and after it.
Put your caption on the next paragraph. Make SURE you do not have a blank
paragraph in between or you lose control of the thing.
Now, if Word needs to move the caption to the next page, it will take the
picture with it.
Once you get used to the idea, you can set up with macros to do all this
automatically for you, so you never have to think about it. The mechanism
is very powerful: I don't think any of us would want Microsoft to make Word
easier to use by removing functionality!
- - - - - - - -
Hope this helps.
--
Beth Rosengard
Mac MVP
On 6/19/02 11:33 AM, in article B9361C9F.265A%sahe...@yahoo.com, "Scott
John McGhie [MVP -- Word]
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Jun 20, 2002, 11:08:52 AM 6/20/02
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Hi Scott:
Everyone has problems with floating objects, which is why we recommend that
you don't use them :-)
The facility is provided so that you can achieve desktop publishing
functionality with Word. There's actually nothing wrong with the
functionality, it works fine (far better than the competitors :-)). But
it's a "specialists tool". It's easy to use if you live in a world of
graphics and frames and layers. But not if you live in the real world :-)
But to use it, you need to be working the way a desktop publisher person
works! The things we normally do in Word text are incompatible with
floating objects.
Floating objects exist in a layer above or behind the text. Thinks of a
Word document as a "sandwich" with layers. The text is in the middle layer,
the floating objects are in the Drawing Layer, and they can be either in
front of or behind the text.
Each floating object has an "anchor" that marks the spot from which Word
computes its origin. You can move these anchors around. So can Word.
Study the Help on "anchors" and "drawing".
To successfully use floating objects, you need an advanced understanding of
how anchors behave, and you need to construct your document so that either
the paragraph you anchor an object to cannot move, or if it does, the object
will be correctly positioned when it does.
Like Beth says, seriously the best way to do this is to convert all your
objects to "Inline with Text" and use paragraph properties to position them.
This way, Word takes care of moving them around and it never goes wrong.
Some objects "cannot" be set as "In line" because they are drawing objects
(vector objects) which cannot exist in the text layer. However, you can use
Insert Object to insert a Microsoft Word Picture, and place your drawing
objects in that. The MS Word Picture then holds all the objects together as
a single unit so that they don't wander around all over the place. And you
get better drawing tools too: things such as Group and Align are all
possible in MS Word Pictures.
Careful Note: Note the way I got into this: Insert>Object>Microsoft Word
Picture. The Word Picture is an OLE Object, and that's the only way to get
to it.
Hope this helps
--
Please post all comments to the newsgroup to maintain the thread.
John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:jo...@mcghie-information.com.au
"Scott Henning" <sahe...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:B9361C9F.265A%sahe...@yahoo.com...
Scott Henning
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Jun 20, 2002, 2:04:59 PM 6/20/02
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Beth and John--
Thanks for your input. It is frustrating though... even with a solid grip
on using the anchors and so forth, the floating objects can still misbehave
in some really startling ways! If they can drive a techie like me crazy, I
feel really sorry for the average user who tries to use them and can't
intuitively get themselves out of the mess!
--Scott Henning
On 6/19/02 9:08 PM, John McGhie [MVP -- Word]
John McGhie [MVP -- Word]
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Jun 21, 2002, 2:52:54 AM 6/21/02
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Hi Scott:
Yeah, I fully agree with you.
The problem is that this subject is *not* easy. Those of us who started
with applications such as Page Maker or Ventura or are used to Quark Express
or InDesign can do it.
The reason it's such a struggle is because it really is a DTP function, and
it's *not* simple. There are no "rules" you can give a person to start them
off, other than "don't float graphics unless you absolutely have to."
Have a look here: <http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/DrawingGraphics.htm>. Lots
of good stuff there :-)
Cheers
--
Please post all comments to the newsgroup to maintain the thread.
John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:jo...@mcghie-information.com.au
news:B936CCAB.27B1%sahe...@yahoo.com...
Eric Salathe
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Jul 6, 2002, 2:19:08 AM 7/6/02
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On 6/19/02 9:08 PM, in article u0ddUABGCHA.1600@tkmsftngp13, "John McGhie
> Everyone has problems with floating objects, which is why we recommend that
> you don't use them :-)
> To successfully use floating objects, you need an advanced understanding of
> how anchors behave, and you need to construct your document so that either
> the paragraph you anchor an object to cannot move, or if it does, the object
> will be correctly positioned when it does.
> Like Beth says, seriously the best way to do this is to convert all your
> objects to "Inline with Text" and use paragraph properties to position them.
> This way, Word takes care of moving them around and it never goes wrong.
I use word to write scientific manuscripts that have many large eps graphics
embedded in them. Everyone used to just lump all the graphics, printed
separately, at the end of the ms. But, since it can take two years to get
into print, it is desirable to put out a nicely printed draft in pdf. LaTeX
is very good for this, since the layout is recalculated after edits. But,
there are many reasons to prefer doing it in Word.
I generally use floating graphics with text "top-and-bottom" since I want
the graph to be positioned at the top or bottom of a page, and not
necessarily on the page where it was referenced. When I insert the caption,
I group it with the graphic so they move together. This works really well
since it allows me to drag, nudge, or use the advanced layout to position
the graph exactly as I want it. But, as you point out, this creates
headaches as text is modified or if a graph takes the whole page (so there
is no text to anchor it to). I'd like to fix the graph right to the page (ie
top of page 2) independent of what the text does. The "move with text" check
box does not seem to alter this behavior. I also lose the automatic caption
numbering.
So, how should I do this? I don't see how having it in-line with a blank
paragraph can help since the graph will still get pushed down when text is
inserted above the graphic. In-line also causes bad page breaks.
I've read up at http://www.mvps.org/word, but there is no direct answer. Is
there a way to take a paragraph out of the text flow and fix it to the page?
Is there a way to anchor a floating graph right to page?
Thanks!
Eric Salathe
John McGhie [MVP]
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Jul 6, 2002, 8:31:58 PM 7/6/02
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Hi Eric:
This responds to article <B94B3F3C.7AE%sal...@atmos.washington.edu>, from
"Eric Salathe" <sal...@atmos.washington.edu> on 6/7/02 5:19 AM:
> I've read up at http://www.mvps.org/word, but there is no direct answer. Is
> there a way to take a paragraph out of the text flow and fix it to the page?
No.
> Is there a way to anchor a floating graph right to page?
No.
Word makes up a print job by "filling pages" beginning at the top of the
file. A Word document is best thought of as a three-layer sandwich, with
text in the middle and two drawing layers front and back. There are
actually 22 different "stories" and they do not necessarily have any z-order
relationship: it's just easier to think of it as three :-)
By setting graphics inline with text, they will behave like a large
paragraph. They will be pushed to the next page if the graphic will no
longer fit on the one it was on. But it retains its relativity with the
text. Word cannot flow text "backwards" through the document to fill the
gaps: you have to do that manually at final output time. Sorry: if you need
that function, you need Publishing software such as LaTeX.
By floating the graphic, you are now putting the object in the drawing
layer. You now have to set whether it is in front of or behind the text,
and which paragraph it is anchored to. The fundamental "unit" of a Word
document is the paragraph. You can anchor graphics only to paragraphs.
You cannot anchor to a "page" in Word, because a word document does not
contain any pages. Pages are generated on the fly at output time (when they
are displayed or printed). Knowing this is fundamental to understanding
pagination in Word. There are no pages: not until you print. They're never
stored in the file: they don't exist until the job goes to the printer.
Sorry to labour the point, but it's very important.
You cannot take a paragraph out of the text flow unless you make it into a
graphic (by putting it in a text box). If you do, it will behave like a
graphic: floating around in the drawing layer. The text box must be anchored
to a paragraph.
The "anchor" sets the origin from which Word calculates the position of the
parts of a graphic.
To avoid having drawing objects wandering around your document, always
anchor the drawing object to its accompanying text. If you are going to do
that, you might as well make it inline: it's less trouble. If the thing is
floating, you have to reposition it each time it does move a page: if it's
sitting on a paragraph that justifies correctly, the picture will always
land in the correct spot.
Now, let's see: did I directly answer your question? Not adequately...
Let's try again:
1) Don't bother with floating graphics on long documents, they're not worth
it. For short documents with eye-catching effects, they are the only way to
achieve those affects. For long documents you have to maintain over time,
forget it.
2) Learn to use the paragraph properties Keep With Next and Page Break
Before to control what happens when Word makes up the pages. Keep With Next
holds a paragraph on the same page as the one after it: throwing it to the
next page if necessary. If you set five paragraphs to keep with next, they
will all move as a block. Page Break Before generates a page break before
each paragraph that has that property.
3) To save stuffing around with this for every picture, set these
properties as part of a "Pix" style that you use for the paragraphs you use
to mount pictures on.
4) When inserting captions, create a blank paragraph after the picture
paragraph, place your insertion point in it and then use Insert Caption.
This places the caption as text in the text layer, rather than as a floating
graphic in a text box in the drawing layer. This has the added advantage
that if the caption is in the text layer, the Table of Contents and Index
Generators can see it: if it is in a Text Box, they can't.
5) To ensure the picture and its caption do not get separated, make sure
the Picture paragraph has a Keep With Next and the Caption paragraph does
not. The page break, if it is needed, will occur either before or after the
pair of them.
6) For difficult situations, create a borderless table and place your
graphic in that. You can then use the table cells to minutely position the
graphic and its caption. Note: a graphic MUST be inline to be "in" a table,
otherwise it floats on top of it.
Come back if you have any further questions.
Hope this helps
--
Please post replies to the newsgroup to maintain the thread.
John McGhie, Microsoft MVP: Word for Macintosh and Word for Windows
Consultant Technical Writer
<jo...@mcghie-information.com.au>
+61 4 1209 1410; Sydney, Australia: GMT + 10 hrs
Eric Salathe
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Jul 9, 2002, 5:19:35 AM 7/9/02
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On 7/6/02 6:31 AM, in article B94D2E6E.1925A%jo...@mcghie-information.com.au,
"John McGhie [MVP]" <jo...@mcghie-information.com.au> wrote:
John, thanks for the lengthy response, but it sounds like bad news. Graphics
inline with text are unacceptable for me. I believe Word's designers really
intended floating graphics to be used for large documents, but they have
serious limitations that are inconsistent with that use.
I'm really mystified. It seems as though a lot of high-level capability is
in Word, such as automatic contents generation and caption numbering, but it
is only available for light-duty applications. Look at microsoft's
documentation on inserting graphics
(http://office.microsoft.com/assistance/2002/articles/wdpositgrph.aspx)
"Graphics can add interest and impact to your Microsoft Word 2002 documents.
Suppose you've completed a letter telling your friends about the great party
you threw for your cat's birthday...."
No, let's not. Let's suppose you wrote this software for grownups. For all
its heft, Word should be able to format a technical draft, not for writing
letters about your cat.
> Let's try again: <snip>
>
> 1) Don't bother with floating graphics on long documents, they're not worth
> it. For short documents with eye-catching effects, they are the only way to
> achieve those affects....
I tried doing it with inline graphics. But, if the graphic is inline, then
it can only appear between two text paragraphs. That means there needs to be
a paragraph break at an appropriate distance up from the bottom of the page
to fit the graphic. This is fine if you have small graphics and short
paragraphs, but for large graphs in a technical report it won't do. Both the
paragraphs and graphs are too big. Avoiding half a page a white space is not
going after "eye-catiching effects", in fact the contrary.
Look at the papers (pdf) at
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~salathe/papers/downscale/
The first (Widmann et al) is done in LaTeX; the second (Salathe) in Word.
How could you get acceptable results using inline graphics? Grab any
scientific textbook or journal. Figs are always outside the text flow and
nearly always placed either at the top or bottom of a page.
Typically, the graphic doesn't fit and will bump to the next page. Thus, you
end up with a huge white space and the graphic on the next page. Or, if you
hit it lucky, you'll get a short fragment of a paragraph, the graph, and a
short frament of the next paragraph. You can fix this by inserting all kinds
of page breaks and artificially breaking paragraphs with a "rest of
paragraph" style. Worse mess than floating graphics drifting around.
Furthermore, since there maybe several figures referenced in a single
paragraph, there is no expectation of them falling on the page where they
are referenced, only that the figures are in order, within a page or so of
the reference, and produce clean page breaks. So, Word's means of dealing
with graphics is totally inconsistent with the formatting of technical
documents.
I can do most of what I want using floating graphics. But, do I need to hand
number captions. And it is impossible to cleanly insert a graphic that
occupies a whole page. There is no way to have the last paragraph on the
previous page break and finish on the page after the graphic.
Yes, maybe I am asking Word to do something it cannot and for which there
are other, better, applications. But Word should be able to do this and the
other applications have other problems. LaTeX is awkward to use and it's
output is awkward to share. FrameMaker is good, but not for OS X. I've
rotated among these three for the last 15 years and really wish Word could
work right.
Eric Salathe
John McGhie [MVP - Word]
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Jul 9, 2002, 1:53:46 PM 7/9/02
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Hi Eric:
Thanks for your response.
This responds to microsoft.public.mac.office.word on Mon, 08 Jul 2002
15:19:35 -0700, Eric Salathe <sal...@atmos.washington.edu>:
> John, thanks for the lengthy response, but it sounds like bad news. Graphics
> inline with text are unacceptable for me. I believe Word's designers really
> intended floating graphics to be used for large documents, but they have
> serious limitations that are inconsistent with that use.
Well... I do documents in the 500 to 2,000-page range for a living. I can
tell you that floating graphics are quite consistent and useable in such
documents. However, the "effect" of placing a floating graphic in the text
stream means that you "do" have to reposition them each time you edit the
document because they do ... ummm ... "float".
By working carefully and fully understanding all the options you can reduce
the amount of time you spend doing this. But I avoid floating graphics,
because in a 2,000 page document that updates every three months there's
just too much work in it.
For shorter documents, under a couple of hundred pages, floating graphics
work very well. We do tend to be a bit inclined to advise users to avoid
them, because they are a complex desktop-publishing mechanism which many
users cannot understand. Hopefully, people writing research papers in a
University should have no conceptual problems with it :-)
> I'm really mystified. It seems as though a lot of high-level capability is
> in Word, such as automatic contents generation and caption numbering, but it
> is only available for light-duty applications. Look at microsoft's
> documentation on inserting graphics
> (http://office.microsoft.com/assistance/2002/articles/wdpositgrph.aspx)
>
> "Graphics can add interest and impact to your Microsoft Word 2002 documents.
> Suppose you've completed a letter telling your friends about the great party
> you threw for your cat's birthday...."
Oh, puhleeazzeee :-) The reason *I* am here is because that crap is there.
Let's save the eye-candy for the clueless newbies shall we, and get down to
brass tacks. On this group, you get to talk to specialists who earn their
living all day in Word doing major publications :-)
I can tell you how to run the pants off FrameMaker and LaTeX in Word. But
you are going to have to accept a couple of things:
1) There *is* a right way and a wrong way to do things in Word.
2) It *will* mean changing some of your work practises.
I didn't like this either when I started. Word has 45 ways to skin any
given cat. It keeps sucking newbies in to distinctly unsafe work practises:
it practically invites poor practice. But for professional work, there is
definitely a right way and a wrong way to go about it, and the bigger your
document, the more the wrong way hurts :-)
> I tried doing it with inline graphics. But, if the graphic is inline, then
> it can only appear between two text paragraphs.
Not (quite) true :-) There is a little-known construct called a "Frame". It
is only of interest to those of us who want to wrap stuff in the text layer.
The benefit of a frame is that it *is* in the text layer, and so *is*
visible to the TOC and Index generators. It is also a discrete object that
cannot be split apart by pagination. The best way to create one is to place
a Text Box in your text using Insert>Text Box, then place your graphic and
its caption in that, then use Format>Text Box>Text Box>Convert to Frame.
You can then drag it where you want it.
> That means there needs to be
> a paragraph break at an appropriate distance up from the bottom of the page
> to fit the graphic. This is fine if you have small graphics and short
> paragraphs, but for large graphs in a technical report it won't do. Both the
> paragraphs and graphs are too big. Avoiding half a page a white space is not
> going after "eye-catiching effects", in fact the contrary.
What? You can't grab three paragraphs and MOVE them before the graphic?
That's what I do. If your document is properly set up, you usually have to
do this only once for each picture.
Oh, OK, so I had you wrong. These are "short" documents, so you can use
floating graphics there if you want to. But having a look at your paper, I
did not see any reason why *I* would use floating graphics. Looking at
Martin's paper, I can not see any reason why I would use floating graphics
there either.
I would do all of those with inline graphics. In some cases, I would insert
a drawing object (Insert>Object>Microsoft Word Picture) first to create a
drawing "canvas" upon which I would arrange smaller pictures. You can do
the same thing with a Frame or a Text Box. The advantage of a Word Picture
is that you can put callouts into it along with your pictures. This
technique creates a single indivisible object so that if it gets thrown from
page to page, it does not fall apart.
To use floating graphics you just have to remember to work in an orderly
manner, ensure that your document is correctly set up for the destination
printer, and that you have used paragraph properties to control the
pagination.
To set graphics floating, having inserted them go to Format>Picture and set
them Floating (wrapped top and bottom or whatever) then use
Format>Picture>Advanced>Picture Position and take care how you set your
relativity options. For best results, try setting your Horizontal alignment
relative to the Page or Margin, and your Vertical alignment to Top or Bottom
relative to Page. Then set "Move object with text."
This means that when the object gets thrown to the next page, it holds its
positioning as either top or bottom of the page.
I assume you do not change page margins within a document: it's very poor
practice. But if you do, set your graphic positioning relative to the Page
so it won't bounce around with the margin.
Having done this, you will only need to shift a couple of pictures slightly
just before you print. You can do it: I do.
> How could you get acceptable results using inline graphics?
Send me a document and I will show you :-) Seriously: if you can't work it
out by yourself, send me an email and we can discuss a small business
arrangement. (Yeah, I need the money: I was yet another casualty of Sept
11...)
> scientific textbook or journal. Figs are always outside the text flow and
> nearly always placed either at the top or bottom of a page.
You can do this in Word if you want to. Either with a frame or a floating
graphic. You just need to remember to be aware of where the graphic is
anchored. Never let the anchor for a graphic be further than one paragraph
from where it appears. If you decide to move the graphic, move the anchor
as well.
> Typically, the graphic doesn't fit and will bump to the next page. Thus, you
> end up with a huge white space and the graphic on the next page.
So you grab a few paragraphs of text and move them back to fill the gap. I
do. Not very often, mind: any page that is 2/3rds full is full "enough" and
the effort involved in getting it any closer is a waste of time.
> You can fix this by inserting all kinds
> of page breaks and artificially breaking paragraphs with a "rest of
> paragraph" style. Worse mess than floating graphics drifting around.
Try "never" to insert a page break. Word will paginate the document for
you, and its results are remarkably good if you get out of the way and let
it :-) Instead of specifying where page breaks "should" go, learn to
specify where they "should not" go.
> So, Word's means of dealing
> with graphics is totally inconsistent with the formatting of technical
> documents.
I know you're frustrated: I can tell :-) But what you are saying is not my
experience. I do this for a living, remember? When the time is *my* money,
I always use Word for a major project: or I pad the quote by 25 per cent if
I have to use anything else.
> But, do I need to hand number captions.
No. You don't. Captions are numbered automatically with the SEQ field.
You can insert SEQ fields by hand also, if you want to. A SEQ field will
number sequentially according to its position in the text flow, regardless
of which order you place the pictures in.
> And it is impossible to cleanly insert a graphic that
> occupies a whole page.
It is? Hmmm... I must try that excuse on my editor. Come on :-) I do it
all the time: it's just a matter of taking care when you are working.
> There is no way to have the last paragraph on the
> previous page break and finish on the page after the graphic.
Fortunately! My style guide will not allow such a horror. You "should"
never break the flow of text with a graphic. But if you must, you can do it
either with a floating graphic or by manually splitting the paragraph.
> FrameMaker is good, but not for OS X.
Why not, I wonder? FrameMaker was originally invented as a Unix
application: it ought to be right at home in OS X.
> rotated among these three for the last 15 years and really wish Word could
> work right.
Well, I am sure I could suggest a little list of improvements too. Come to
think of it, I *have*... Right now they're avoiding me at Redmond... But
it will certainly do what you want, quickly, cleanly and easily.
Hang around and we'll show you how.
ambe...@gmail.com
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May 11, 2017, 11:09:03 AM 5/11/17
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How to make text wrap in drawings?
How to Wrap Text Around an Image in Google Draw
Source: https://groups.google.com/g/microsoft.public.mac.office.word/c/ixcCK37XcvA