{"id":1008,"date":"2015-07-20T09:34:09","date_gmt":"2015-07-20T08:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sharonmurphy.com\/wordpress\/?p=1008"},"modified":"2020-07-24T13:23:54","modified_gmt":"2020-07-24T12:23:54","slug":"word-xref-p1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sharonmurphy.com\/wordpress\/2015\/07\/word-xref-p1\/","title":{"rendered":"Broken cross references in Word: Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s one every tech writer encounters sooner or later (usually sooner): you’re writing a document in Word, you insert a handy cross reference to a section title, you keep editing, you update your cross references, and all of a sudden half of your document is a mess of repeated text all over the place – gah!<\/p>\n

In pictures:<\/p>\n

\"Draft<\/a>
Draft 1<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Second<\/a>
A couple of text edits…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"And<\/a>
And finally, update cross references… GAH!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So, what’s going on?<\/p>\n

When you add a cross reference to a heading, you have to imagine there are invisible markers at the start and end of the text that say “here’s where to start quoting” and “here’s where to stop quoting” – if you edit the heading starting from any point before the “here’s where to stop quoting” marker, that marker gets pushed out, and you get all the additional content in your updated cross reference. <\/p>\n

Similarly, if you edit the heading starting from any point after<\/em> the “here’s where to stop quoting” marker (or before the “here’s where to start quoting” marker), that won’t make it into an updated cross reference. For example:<\/p>\n

\"Text<\/a>
Text update not picked up by a cross reference<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You’ll have to trust me that I did update cross references before doing that last screen capture!<\/p>\n

Lesson:<\/b> be careful where you put your cursor when you’re editing!<\/p>\n