MS Word Cross-Reference Woes

October 12, 2012 10:37 AM

Need help updating MS Word (2010) cross-references to reflect the order in which they appear.

I'm working on a 4 page document and it has footnotes and cross references. I add a new paragraph at the beginning of the document.
I cross reference footnotes 3 and 4 in the first sentence.

First sentence would now read like this:

Separate keywords(3) with a space and combine multiple words into single words(4).

Is there anyway to update fields so that the first sentence of my document (which reference 3 and 4) can be updated to start at 1 and 2... ?

Does that make sense?

posted by KogeLiz to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

Usually to update fields, you right-click over the field and one of the options is Update Field. Did you already try that?
posted by SuperSquirrel at 11:38 AM on October 12, 2012

I see what you're saying. The numbering is based on the order of the reference, not on the order of cross-reference, so the F9 update key (same as SuperSquirrel's right-click) doesn't help.

The way I would do it is to copy-paste the footnote reference (3) from page 2 to the first sentance, then create a cross-reference on page 2. That's so inelegant, and would be a real time-sink if you had more than 2 references to fix. There ought to be a better way, but I don't know what it is. I'll be watching here to see if anybody else does.
posted by aimedwander at 11:45 AM on October 12, 2012