{"id":1019,"date":"2015-09-25T10:25:43","date_gmt":"2015-09-25T09:25:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sharonmurphy.com\/wordpress\/?p=1019"},"modified":"2020-07-24T13:23:13","modified_gmt":"2020-07-24T12:23:13","slug":"broken-cross-references-in-word-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sharonmurphy.com\/wordpress\/2015\/09\/broken-cross-references-in-word-part-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Broken cross references in Word: Part 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

I work across different machines with different versions of Word. On one machine, when I update the cross references in a document, they lose the character formatting I’ve loving applied to make them stand out from the regular text (blue italic, if you’re asking). This doesn’t happen on the other machines – I’m not sure what the difference is, probably the version of Word or the OS. However, I have found a way to force cross reference formatting to be sticky, and that’s the topic of today’s post. <\/p>\n

The first time I updated a 100 page document with a healthy sprinking of cross references on most pages and saw them all revert to regular font, my heart skipped a beat in horror. Undo restored them, then I spent a good hour trawling the web looking for a solution. I found one. It’s a bit of hassle, but much quicker than reapplying character formatting to a meeeelion cross references every time you update your doc.<\/p>\n

For each link in your doc:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Right-click and select Toggle Field Codes<\/b> from the popup menu that appears.
    The link text is replaced with something that looks like:
    { REF _Ref123456789 }<\/code><\/li>\n
  2. Edit the field code to add \\* Charformat<\/code>. It should now look like:
    { REF _Ref123456789 \\* Charformat }<\/code><\/li>\n
  3. Apply the required character formatting to the cross reference text (using a style or manually). Looking at the field code, make sure the opening {<\/code> is formatted as required: it’s the formatting of this character in particular that’s used to format the cross reference text – the rest of the text in the field code can be formatted any way you like.<\/li>\n
  4. Toggle the field code back, then right-click and select Update Field<\/b>. The cross reference text\/page number\/whatever should update, but its formatting should be retained.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Notes:<\/b> <\/p>\n