MS Word, graphics, anchors, text -- sliding and disappearing -- HELP! PLEASE!

[Bob Foster <robert -dot- foster -at- SYMPATICO -dot- CA>]

Fellow Word sufferers (occasionally I'm sure),

 

After a quick search through the Tech Writ List archives I tried to find help on above but with no help.  (wrong place??)  Anyway here goes.....

 

I am working on a Word 2000 document (because 97 was giving the same problem!) where I have a bunch of screen grab gifs.  The connection between the imported gifs and the body text is something like oil and water.  The pictures love to slip and slide and sometimes even disappear.  Sometimes they will appear on top of one another when I group new callouts I create to the graphic imported.  Carriage returns added will sometimes take a graphic for a ride down the page (snail pace) and sometime the unofficial, contraband captions will slide underneath  -- and sometimes they sit there stunned.  I have looked up "float" in a couple of Word tomes, and help files... and "object" "embedding" ad nauseum but with no real answer to my problem.

 

All I want to do is bring in the gifs, add some callouts, group latter for each former, have each resulting glob stay in one place with relationship to text, and then add stuff in the middle and everything shift down like a nice document.  Sometimes the graphics seem to "float" above the paragraphs symbols (I have all the symbols... turned on so I can see them, even the hyperactive anchor) and sometimes they don't but actually join the team and fit between two para symbols.

 

I went through some agony with Framemaker last year doing the same thing and with help from a colleague finally figured it out, but alas mostly I get condolences here when I mention Word and graphics.  Yikes! Deadlines!

 

Could someone help or point me in the right direction?  I have looked up to the point of distraction... really!!!  The help files are starting to run together in my poor Pooh brain!

 

Panically yours and potentially forever grateful,

 

Bob Foster

Montreal

robert -dot- foster -at- sympatico -dot- ca

 

"Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly"  GK Chesterton