Reference to Section Number

[Colin Higbie]

What is the best (easiest/most stable) way to do this:

I have a legal document. It has a few dozen sections in it. It is a form, and
some sections are left out when merging, or, if the document is edited in the
future, sections may be added or removed.

In some sections, I refer to other sections (e.g., "... as defined in Section
3...").

I want to make sure that if I add a new Section 2, that all references to
Section 3 automatically update to refer to Section 4. These references are
mainly buried in the middle of text in other paragraphs, not just in a TOC or
index.

Is this best done with Bookmarks, or is there a better way? In WordPerfect,
you would just assign a Reference Mark to the Section Number and then assign
Targets for that Ref wherever you wanted to refer to it. Is there something
equivalent in Word?

Thanks,
Colin

 

[Colin Higbie]

Oh, I figured it out. Very nice feature!! Insert | Reference| Cross Reference.
It shows a mini list of all my outline entries and I just select the one I
want.

I'm not sure - would this let me use any text from anywhere else in the
document (that's how it works in WordPerfect)? For just using section numbers,
this feature is certainly nicer than WordPerfect's.

- Colin

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I'm not sure what you mean by "any text from anywhere else in the document,"
but I think the answer is yes. The trick is that if you apply a bookmark to
text, then you can insert a cross-reference anywhere to repeat that text
*or* insert the number of the page it appears on or the word "above" or
"below." Some items are already automatically bookmarked by Word, including
headings (whether numbered or not), numbered items, footnotes, endnotes, and
automatic captions (Figure, Table, Equation, etc.), saving you the trouble
of inserting a bookmark manually.

Whenever you have inserted a cross-reference, though, you have to be careful
in dealing with the bookmarked items, as it is all too easy to get new text
inside the bookmark. For example, if you have cross-referenced a heading and
then press Enter at the beginning of the heading to insert a new paragraph
above it, you'll get the entire new paragraph inside the bookmark, and it
will be repeated where you've cross-referenced the heading. Worse still, if
you insert a manual page break, you'll either get a page break in the
cross-reference or, if you're referring to the page number, you'll get a
reference to the previous page number (where the page break is).

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
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