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I used outline view to re-organize a large 200+ page manual today, and none of my cross-references got broken in the process.
Wow! What a revelation! The cross-references are now actually working as intended instead of breaking every time I move a section!
I have been using Word for 10 years and have never realized that Word would be inserting hidden bookmarks to handle internal references, because I most certainly do not use bookmarks, and have not inserted one into any manual since Word 97.
-----Original Message-----
From: Monique Semp [mailto:monique -dot- semp -at- earthlink -dot- net]
Sent: March-26-12 4:21 PM
To: Ben Davies; techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: Word 2010 cross reference issue
> I am writing large manuals (200+) in Microsoft Word 2010. I have many
> internal links and cross-references in these manuals. If I create a
> cross-reference to a section, and then move the section that is being
> referenced, the cross-reference sometimes gets broken. Instead of
> displaying the heading number and text that I originally inserted for
> the reference (for example, refer to section 1.1.1. Fake Section), it
> replaces the heading number with a 0, and dumps all of the content
> from the referenced section into my cross-reference.
A little late to this conversation (I've been offline for a couple of weeks), but I wanted to chime in with the solution I've been using for this
problem: when I move a section in Word (by cut-and-paste), I typically add an empty paragraph before the start of the desired content and another paragraph after the content, and include those extra empty paragraphs in my cut-and-paste. This eliminates the problem because by including those extra para, I ensure that the bookmark/reference markers remain intact. Then
ctrl-f9 always works.
But now I have a new thing to try (the outline moving) -- so that might be even better! But none-the-less, in case the outlining trick doesnât work (because at times the outline view seems a bit wonky), you might want to try this adding-paragraphs technique.
-Monique
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