How do I insert a cross reference to a paragraph with a user-defined style

[nurdglaw]

I don’t like the default paragraph styles. I don’t want to modify the defaults.

I have created styles myself called myTitle and mySubtitle.

I wish to create a cross-reference to a paragraph with one of these styles. How do I do so?

[ajlittoz]

Paragraph styles have nothing to do with cross-references (except the special Heading n paragraphs used to create the TOC). You can cross-reference any location in your document.

The first step is to identify the “source” location. You can do it in two ways:

• Set cross-reference

  • Select the range you want to identify as a source
  • Insert>Cross-reference; the dialog should open in the Cross-references tab
  • In Type, click on *Set Reference
  • Give it a name in the Name box
  • Press OK

Note: the range may be reduced at a spot position if you don’t intend to reference the content of the selection, i.e. you’re interesetd only in the page number or chapter number

• Bookmark

  Normally, bookmarks are intended for quick scrolling to different positions in the document but they may also be used as reference sources.

  • Select the range you want to identify as a source
  • Insert>Bookmark
  • Give it a meaningful Name instead of “Bookmark 123”
  • Press Insert

The second step is using the reference to insert one of its attributes in the text.

• At the position where you want this attribute, Insert>Cross-reference, Corss-references tab
• In Type, click on Insert Reference or Bookmarks depending on how you defined the source
• In Insert reference to, click on Page for the page number, Chapter for the chapter number or Reference for the source text.
• Press Insert

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[mikekaganski]

special Heading n paragraphs

… which are only special in the sense they have pre-configured outline level. Any paragraph with an outline level other than Text would appear both in ToC, and in Headings section of Cross-references tab of Fields dialog.

[nurdglaw]

Thanks. I had hoped to be able to add the paragraph contents and “above/below” as I can from a numbered paragraph (the main type of source that I use). It seems not to be possible with references and I couldn’t make cross-references to bookmarks work.

Fortunately my section contained numbered paragraphs and it struck me I ought to specify the number in the cross-reference so I ended up retyping the subsection name and using my old friend a cross-reference to a numbered paragraph to generate above/below. I guess I could look into defining my own field to generate the text of both the subsection name and the cross-reference, but I feel I’ve wasted enough time on this issue already!

Thanks again.

[ajlittoz]

I didn’t went through all the “Insert reference to” possibilities. Above/below works equally well with any cross-references.

In the question itself, you mention a myTitle (BTW, why don’t you customise built-in Title; built-in styles are freely customisable) which, I assume, formats your document title. If you need this title page headers, TOC heading and other locations, you can define it File>Properties, Description tab, Title box and insert it as a cross-reference of the DocInformation tab, Title type. This way, title edition is much easier and does incur the risk of damaging the definition range of the bookmark or set reference.

[nurdglaw]

I’m wary of changing the default styles. In my experience (i.e. it may have happened once upon a time using some text editing system; I really can’t remember), things break unexpectedly if you modify the default and sometimes it’s actually impossible to restore the default and you don’t notice for a few weeks, by which time you’ve forgotten what you changed etc. etc. I find it safer just to create new styles and make them do the things I know I want them to do.

When I tried, with version 6.3.6.2, I hadn’t seen that I could use above/below; thanks for pointing it out. It seems I could use a Reference and a Field in combination to get the text and above/below.

[ajlittoz]

What would the field for? Fields are fine for variable information like date, time, filename, page count, … but when text content is concerned, you’re better off with xrefs. There are exceptions though. Which specific field do you want to use combined with an xref?

[nurdglaw]

I have a section headed “Issues/Queries”, which has style mySubtitle. I want to add some text somewhere that says “See Issues/Queries above.”

In the future, I might move the section to the end of the document. That’s fine, because by defining a reference at the start of the section (thanks again for telling me about these), and inserting an “above/below” cross reference, that will be changed automatically.

Also, in the future, I might want to change the section title to be “Issues and Queries”. I’d like the text of the cross reference to change automatically as well. Since I still haven’t found a way to insert a cross-reference to a reference that would include the full text of the paragraph containing the reference (which I can do if referring to a numbered paragraph), I could introduce a “user variable” field with the section heading text and include that in both places. (See what I mean about having wasted enough time on this already? )

[ajlittoz]

To capture content, the Set Reference or Bookmark must be defined on a selected range of character/words. The Reference data type will echo the content of the range. That’s as simple as that.

If you create a reference/bookmark on a cursor position, you have no range, therefore no content. You can only insert page or chapter number + above/below.

Don’t go for variables unless you really want an “auto-modifying” document. Variables are not really handy and you need a dedicated area to configure them. A better replacement is File>Properties, Custom Properties tab. The definitions are stored in a well-defined dialog, outside the text itself (but internal to the document). The properties are inserted from the DocInformation tab of the fields/cross-references dialog.

But since properties are “global”, you won’t get the above/below flag. In your case, the set reference/bookmark is the best option.

[nurdglaw]

Thank you again! You are quite right, I was simply Setting Reference to a point rather than to selected text. Now I have set a reference to some text, I can include the cross-reference in precisely the way I would expect. Thanks yet again, and congratulations on your patience.