How to change Appendix chapter name

Question

I have a long appendix which includes a lot of equations and figures. My document class is report. In order to have a separate appendix section, I used:

\appendix
\chapter{The first appendix} 

The outcome shows like this

Chapter A

The first appendix

How can I change it to:

Appendix A

The first appendix

I also tried

\chapter*{Appendix: The First Appendix}
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Appendix: The First Appendix}

But in this way, my equation number does not start with A.1. This will not work for me.

Answer 1

As xport noted, you probably have an old (very old) version of TeX. Newer version don't have this problem. The best solution is to update; you probably have a lot of other since-corrected misfeatures in addition to this one. If you can't update, try the following:

\appendix
\renewcommand\chaptername{Appendix}
\chapter{The first appendix} 

Answer 2

I do not really understand your problem. However, maybe that you are looking fro something like this:

\documentclass{report}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{blindtext}

\makeatletter
\def\setChapterprefix#1{\gdef\@Prefix{#1}}
\setChapterprefix{}
\renewcommand*\l@chapter[2]{%
  \ifnum \c@tocdepth >\m@ne
    \addpenalty{-\@highpenalty}%
    \vskip 1.0em \@plus\p@
    \setlength\@tempdima{1.5em}%
    \begingroup
      \parindent \z@ \rightskip \@pnumwidth
      \parfillskip -\@pnumwidth
      \leavevmode \bfseries
      \advance\leftskip\@tempdima
      \hskip -\leftskip
      \@Prefix 
      #1\nobreak\hfil \nobreak\hb@xt@\@pnumwidth{\hss #2}\par
      \penalty\@highpenalty
    \endgroup
  \fi}
    \makeatother
\begin{document}
    \tableofcontents
    \chapter{Introduction to Quantum Electrodynamics}
        \blindtext
    \appendix
    \addtocontents{toc}{\protect\setChapterprefix{Appendix }}
    \chapter{Calculus of Variations}
        \blindtext
    \chapter{Digital Signal Processing}
        \blindtext
\end{document}

Answer 3

Use the following code within the chapter not the preamble:

\setcounter{chapter}{0}
\appendix
\makeatletter
\renewcommand{\@chapapp}{Appendix}
\makeatother

Answer 4

Before starting the chapter that will be your appendix insert the following commands:

\renewcommand\chaptername{Appendix}                      % hereafter, chapters are called "Appendix"
\renewcommand\thechapter{\Alph{chapter}}                % chapter number in alph letters
\renewcommand\thesection{\Alph{chapter}.\Roman{section}} % make sections "A.I"
\setcounter{chapter}{0}                                  % start numbering chapters from 1 on again

Answer 5

This might be a corner case but for me, none of the answers works. Because I'm using titlesec to change all other title formats, the chapter name is fixed by me using \titleformat in the preamble. Adding the following command right before the appendix can change the title name for me

\appendix % change numbering
\titleformat{\chapter}{\normalfont\large}{Appendix \thechapter:}{1em}{} % change keyword
\input{../maintext/AppendixA} % load appendix (starting with \chapter)