"Error! No text of specified style in document" when copied and pasting to new document on Microsoft Word 2013

Question

I have a document with complete formatting, references and captions on tables and figures. Now, when I copy and paste a segment of the original document to a new blank document, all the formatting, references and captions are still there. However, when I try to print it or export it to pdf, I got this error "Error! No text of specified style in document" on figure captions and references to those figures in text.

I tried several paste option but it didn't work. There should be an easy method to paste everything to a new document and remove all references and captions from the original document but maintain the formatting such as font size, paragraph spacing and etc, but I can't find the solution. Please help.

Thanks.

Solution

The Real Issue: You have a document with a chapter-numbering scheme such as "Chapter 1.1.1", but there are no chapters defined.

The Fix: When a caption is inserted, Word offers to define the numbering scheme. For example, right-click an image and click "Insert caption". In the Caption dialog box, click the "Numbering" button. A new dialog box appears, and you may then check/uncheck the box to "Include chapter number". This process is shown in the screenshots below. If you uncheck the option to "Include chapter number", then your captions will no longer produce/display the error message "Error! No text of specified style in document".

Bonus Tip: If you already have many captions in your document with this error, then you may fix all of them simultaneously. First, delete and reinsert one of the captions following the procedure outlined above. Then type "Control-A" to select all of your document. Then type "F9" and all captions will be automatically updated with the newly corrected caption format.

Comments

[Admin]

What if you instead of copy/paste make a copy of the original file and remove from the copy all contents apart from the segment you want to keep? Does it help? Check also: superuser.com/questions/641315/…

[Admin]

The caption fields are likely looking for Heading (or other style) for caption number. If you only copied part of doc and omitted the heading, then when the caption field updates (often set to do automatically on printing), then you'll get that error message. To convert caption fields to text (BEFORE you print), select the field and press CTRL SHIFT F9 - this will make it plain text as displayed and not a caption field anymore.

[Admin]

Thanks you all for the feedback. The method suggested by @Tanya solves it. I wish I can convert your comment to answer.