Word 2013 helpfully shows you the anchors whenever youвЂ™re clicked on a picture, but it is possible to see them in earlier versions: since they are formatting marks, they will show up if you click the symbol that looks like a backwards P in the Paragraph group on the Home ribbon. ItвЂ™s Word trying to be helpful, aiming to keep pictures and the writing about them together, but it does feel pretty random if you donвЂ™t know the logic. That means that if you type an extra paragraph and the anchor moves to a new page, the picture will jump to that new page too. They usually jump because an anchor and its picture have to be on the same page.

If you then move or delete that bit of text, the image will move or be deleted with it - thatвЂ™s why pictures sometimes vanish unexpectedly. When you whizz a picture around the page, Word makes a decision about what text to tie it to: it generates an вЂanchorвЂ™, usually at the beginning of the paragraph nearest to the top left corner of the figure (working up). That picture will then stay exactly where it is when you edit or add to the text or insert another picture вЂ“ it will move only if you grab it and place it somewhere else yourself (or play with the numbers in the вЂPositionвЂ™ tab of More Layout Options).ДЄllowing pictures to move with text is a little more complicated and depends on understanding the idea of anchors. If you have a picture exactly where you want it on a page, all you have to do is uncheck the box (or make the appropriate selection from one of the menus in Word 2013). In earlier versions you have to go into More Layout Options|Position and check or uncheck вЂMove object with textвЂ™ вЂ“ itвЂ™s checked as default. In Word 2013 вЂMove with textвЂ™ and вЂFix position on pageвЂ™ appear as options on the Wrap Text menu and on the little pop out Layout Options menu (so long as your picture isnвЂ™t in line with the text). Why do pictures move? How do I stop pictures moving?Д«asically, pictures can either be locked in position on the page or moved around with the text. Notice also how the Tight-wrapped text goes inside the boxes because these images have a transparent background. For example, here you can see that although the books themselves donвЂ™t overlap, the boxes round them do. This is useful if you want to get two pictures closer together than their boundary boxes would otherwise allow. It looks complicated, but I donвЂ™t think IвЂ™ve ever, in years of creating worksheets and doing magazine layout, had to resort to changing anything in the sections labelled вЂHorizontalвЂ™ and вЂVerticalвЂ™ вЂ“ IвЂ™ve just used the вЂOptionsвЂ™ section.Д«efore we go on to that though have a look at the вЂAllow overlapвЂ™ button. The other, Position, provides some detailed options for controlling where your pictures go and is the key to stopping them from jumping around. One lets you control the size of your picture, but there are easier ways to do that (see How do I change the size of pictures in Word? on my website). You may have noticed there are two other tabs in this: To control how close the text is to the edge of a picture we opened the More Layout Options window from the right click menu. Last week, we looked at the ways in which Word can wrap text around pictures. More from my own editor, Catherine Fitzsimons, creator of educational materials and community magazines, on the tricky task of controlling how images behave in Word documents вЂ¦

Get out of edit mode word