The crystallization of poly(epsilon-caprolactone) (PCL) and isotactic polypropylene (iPP) infiltrated in nanoporous anodic alumina oxide (AAO) templates was reexamined to demonstrate the importance of obtaining polymer free, clean AAO surfaces on the nucleation, size dependence of crystallization temperature (T-c), and texture. The AAO pore diameters cover a broad range from 400 to 20 nm. When the AAO templates were completely free of any residual polymer on their surfaces, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) experiments exhibited a single crystallization peak for all the samples with different AAO pore sizes. A drastic decrease in T-c with density of domains indicated a transition from heterogeneous to homogeneous/surface nucleation. A regular decrease of T-c with pore size was observed in the low T-c regime, as a result of the volume dependence of nucleation events. The chain alignment of the two polymers infiltrated in AAO was studied by two-dimensional wide-angle X-ray scattering (WAXS). By comparing the experimental and simulated WAXS patterns, the orientation modes of the polymers were identified and compared with previous studies.