My document contains a number of figures that are named as figures and have captions with their figure numbers. I expect to see them listed under Images in the Navigator as Figure 8, for example.
But they are not. In the Navigator, none of the figures have the correct names applied to them. For example, graphics6 in the Navigator is actually Figure 4.
Surely it is not supposed to work this way, is it? If not, what can I do to get this to work correctly?
Indeed, Writer’s captioning system is a bit… strange. When you set a caption for a particular picture, what Writer does is to insert that picture inside a frame together with a number range and the caption text you wrote. What’s called “Figure” is the number range, not the frame nor the picture… which is itself inside another frame. But the navigator shows the frames (that of the picture and that of the caption), not the number range. To make things more confusing, by default frames get a sequential name (Frame1, Frame2… or Image1, Image2…) following the insertion order. And that’s why the frame number and the number range number are completely unrelated.
You can give a custom name to any frame (right click → Properties → Options tab) and you can see all the instances of the number range when inserting a cross reference, but that’s it.
Thank you for the explanation. I didn’t realize that it is so unwieldy. So if I were to rename the frame to match the name and number in the caption (e.g., Figure 5), it would have the wrong number if its sequence gets changed?
I wonder how people organize long, complicated documents.
Exactly, matching the frame name with the number in the caption is a bad idea. You need to give to the frame a name that recalls what’s in the figure, not its number.
One more question related to this. Would it make more sense for some reason to rename and link to the image or the frame? Or does it matter?
By the way, it looks like a frame encloses both the image and the caption.
That’s more a matter of preference, I think. I tend to use the build-in cross reference system through fields (Insert → Field → More Fields → Cross-Reference tab), and that uses the number range directly. But of course, instead of cross-references you can use links directly from the navigator thanks to the “Drag Mode.” In that case I’ll go for the external frame, but that’s me 
Ah yes. Now I remember using fields to do this. My error was thinking that it was the Navigator.
Thank you so much.