Word Hacks [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Hack 78 Cross-Reference Among Documents

This hack shows you how to create
cross-references among different Word documents.

When you create a cross-reference
in
Word, no option exists for referencing content in another document.
But sometimes you need to split your work into multiple files, like
the chapters in a book. (Word once actually encouraged this practice;
the Word 2.0 manual says, "If your document is
longer than 20 pages, consider creating several smaller
documents.") If you use fields and bookmarks, you
can create your own dynamic cross-references among separate Word
documents.

A cross-reference has two parts: the reference
and the target. A target is sort of like an
Internet URL, and a reference is like a link to that URL. Each target
can have multiple references pointing to it, but each reference can
point to only one target. Just like URLs, each target must have a
unique identifier.

8.10.1 Understanding Word's Native Cross-Referencing

When you make a cross-reference
in Word
(InsertReferencesCross-reference or
InsertCross-reference, depending on your version of Word),
it displays the dialog shown in Figure 8-17. You can
choose between several different reference types, but notice that
there's no option for text in another document.

Figure 8-17. Word's Cross-reference dialog

When you create a cross-reference this way, Word
inserts a bookmark
around the target text. Word hides the bookmark it creates to mark
your reference target, but you can see its name if you look in the
InsertBookmark dialog and check the
"Hidden bookmarks" box, as shown in
Figure 8-18. If your hidden bookmarks
don't show up in the dialog, uncheck and then
recheck the box.

Figure 8-18. You can view your cross-reference bookmarks in the Bookmark dialog

Word assigns the bookmark's name, something like
"_Ref46516798," to make the
bookmark unique. The leading underscore denotes a hidden bookmark.

While the bookmark's name may be unique,
it's not very useful. If you need to determine which
bookmark belongs to which reference target, the list shown in Figure 8-19 offers little comfort.

Figure 8-19. Word's decidedly unhelpful bookmark-naming convention for cross-references

Identifying specific bookmarks is an important part of
troubleshooting cross-references, because bookmarks behave very, very
strangely when you edit the text they enclose. For example, if you
add text to the end of a heading that you cross-referenced and update
the reference, the new text isn't included in the
reference. Figure 8-20 shows this phenomenon using a
manually created bookmark (so the ends are visible), but the same
thing happens with Word's cross-reference bookmarks.

Figure 8-20. When you add text at the end of a bookmarked paragraph, the bookmark doesn't expand

The solution? If you need to add text to a reference paragraph, you
must put the new text before the last character and then delete the
last character. But wait, it gets worse. Inserting text at the
beginning of the paragraph works just fine, but if you hit Enter with
your cursor at the beginning of the paragraph, the
bookmark's beginning gets left behind, as shown in
Figure 8-21.

Figure 8-21. A wayward bookmark

Now that you've gotten a peek into the way Word
cross-references work, you're ready to create your
own cross-references between two different documents.

8.10.2 Create Cross-References with INCLUDETEXT Fields

To reference text in a different
document, you can use the
same general method Word does: mark the target with a unique bookmark
and then reference the contents of the bookmark with a field.

When you use this technique, put all the related documents in the same folder so they can be moved around together without breaking any references.

For example, say you have a book with six chapters named
"Chapter One,"
"Chapter Two," and so on. Chapter
Two contains a section you want to reference in Chapter Three.

First, open the document containing the target (Chapter Two in this
example) and go to the heading you want to reference. Select the
entire heading, except for the trailing
paragraph mark. Select InsertBookmark and give the bookmark
a descriptive name, as shown in Figure 8-22. Word
will warn you if you try to use any illegal characters, such as a
space, in the name.

Figure 8-22. Choose a descriptive and unique name for your bookmark

Click the Add button to insert the bookmark. If
you've chosen to show bookmarks (select
ToolsOptions and click the View tab), the
bookmark's ends will appear as grey or black
brackets, depending on your version of Word. Don't
worry; the bookmarks will not appear when you print the document.

To avoid accidentally deleting or moving one end of a bookmark, you should work with bookmarks visible. You can always use Print Preview to see how your text will look without them.

Next, go to the document and find the location where you want the
reference to appear. Press Ctrl-F9 (or select InsertField)
to insert a blank set of field braces and type the following between
them:

INCLUDETEXT "Chapter Two.doc" 
BookmarkName

Note that you enclose the filename in quotes, but not the bookmark
name.

Select the field and press F9. The reference will now display the
bookmarked text. With "Field
shading" set to Always (select
ToolsOptions and click the View tab), you can easily spot
your cross-references, as shown in Figure 8-23.

Figure 8-23. A cross-reference to an external Word document

If Word displays a "Source File Not Found" error in your INCLUDETEXT field, go to File Open, navigate to the folder containing the source document, and press Cancel. Then select the field and press F9.

With an INCLUDETEXT field, you insert more than
just the bookmark's contents. The bookmark itself
now appears in the reference document's list of
bookmarks.

Any fields in the target text, such as a caption's SEQ field, also get mingled with the reference document's fields, which can throw off caption numbering.

For more hacks about cross-referencing in Word, check out [Hack #43]
and [Hack #44] .