Cross Ref Hyperlinks Not Taking Hyperlink Style, Even When Applied Manually

Question

I've noticed that cross-references do not use the Hyperlink style. Instead, I have to manually select the x-ref and apply a color and underline. I thought I'd see if there were any others with this problem and was told to make sure that the x-ref was set to Hyperlink style. When I did that (it wasn't, it was set to List style), the manually-applied formatting went away *and* the Hyperlink formatting went away too! Only for the x-ref, the space and period after the x-ref actually got the Hyperlink style applied. And the x-ref has, now, the Hyperlink style applied, but it appears as regular text, no color, no underline. I checked that the Hyperlink style is set to a color and underline, and it is. But it seems the cross-reference isn't having any of it. Any ideas?

Ancillary: when I updated these manually-formatted x-refs, the manual formatting went away. Another reason why I'd like to get MS cross-references to work properly with the proper, Hyperlink, style (having effect!).

Thanks,

Maria

Answer 1

 I'd like to point out that the Cross-reference dialog box has the "Insert as hyperlink" option which would make one think that the x-ref would be, um, inserted as a hyperlink. Only, that is not the case.

Au contraire, it is inserted as a hyperlink. What isn't done is to apply a hyperlink Style. The two are different, though I can understand your confusion, since hyperlinks are often formatted to appear as blue, underlined, text.

Answer 2

Hi Paul,

After (naturally) posting this, I found this article: http://wordfaqs.mvps.org/formatcrossreferences.htm#FormatAll, which has a comprehensive answer in the last section. However, I'd like to point out that the Cross-reference dialog box has the "Insert as hyperlink" option which would make one think that the x-ref would be, um, inserted as a hyperlink. Only, that is not the case. The real weirdness to me was that I couldn't even apply the Hyperlink style to the x-ref; but that is mentioned in the article. As a side note, after following the procedure, two sets of numbered steps were all set to Hyperlink style and had to have formatting cleared before it could be applied. The mysteries of Word! 

Thanks,

Maria

Answer 3

Cross-references are not intended to look like hyperlinks - Word has hyperlinks for that. That said, you can get a cross-references to look like a hyperlink by:

1. selecting the cross-reference and pressing Shift-F9 to expose the field code, which will look like { REF BkMk \h } or { REF BkMk \h \* MERGEFORMAT }
2. editing the field code to appear as { REF BkMk \h \* CHARFORMAT } and applying the Hyperlink Style to at least the 'R' of 'REF'
3. Press F9 to update the field.

Even this, however, won't cause the font colour to change when the hyperlink is 'followed'.