MS Word 2016: swap labels with number in fugure captions

You can't change the sequence that the Insert Caption dialog uses. What you can do is check the Exclude label from caption option in the dialog box, then type the text part of the caption after the field(s) that Word inserts. Or you can insert the whole caption manually.

A caption such as a Figure is quite simple. It consists of a piece of plain text (the label) and either one or two field codes for the number part, like this:

Figure { SEQ Figure * Arabic } (followed by the caption text)

if you specify that you do not want chapter numbers in the number part, and like this if you specify that you want Chapter Number. (This example assumes that the Chapter numbers are in Heading 1 style paragraphs):

Figure { STYLEREF 1 s }-{ SEQ Figure * ARABIC s 1 } (followed by the caption text)

You can insert captions manually just by using the label part and field(s) as Word uses. Word uses the paragraph style Caption when it inserts figures, tables numbers etc., so you might want to do the same as Word.

So, assuming the one-field numbering, you could insert

{ SEQ Figure * Arabic } Fig. Test Figure

(The { } have to be the special field code brace pairs that you can insert using ctrl-F9 on Windows desktop Word.)

You can save that as an autotext or autocorrect to make it easier to enter.

The question is, does everything else that you need to use still work as you expect?

Well, if you have a table of Figures, Word inserts a TOC field like this for captions with the label Figure

{ TOC h z c "Figure" }

However, when Word searches for captions to include in the Table of Figures, it doesn't search for the label Figure, or the paragraph style Figure. It searches for { SEQ } fields whose sequence name is Figure. So

Figure { SEQ Figure * ARABIC }

{ SEQ Figure * ARABIC } Fig.

will appear in the Table of Figures, but

{ SEQ Fig * ARABIC }

will not.

So you should be OK if yo wan to insert a Table of Figures, unless you want the table to show the label before the number even though the captions show it afterwards.

You should still also be able to use the Insert Cross Reference dialog box because when you select "Figure" in the Reference Type dropdown, it also searches for SEQ fields with sequence name Figure. It even recognises that the Word Figure is the label even when it comes after the number.

So the only problems would be if you wanted the references to be the other way around from the captions (e.g. Fig. 1 rather than 1 Fig.), or you wanted to use the "Only caption text" option and end up with the text "Fig. Test figure" rather than "Test figure"

At least, that is how it all works here on Windows Word. But you should verify those behaviours for yourself. For example, I have an RTL script language enabled on my copy of Windows (and at one time on Word) and I suppose that might have an effect on how Word recognises captions and labels.