Creating dynamic references to a changing list of appendices

Question

I'm currently writing a document which will ultimately have a large number of appendices at the end, but the final number and ordering of the appendices won't be clear until almost the very end of the process. I would like to start adding appendix references within to the main body of the document now (eg "Please refer to 'Appendix D: The Cat Sat on the Mat' for a specific example of this"). However, if I do this using just plain text, my appendix letter references (eg Appendix A, Appendix B, Appendix C) in the main body of my document will soon become out-of-sync with my actual appendix letter assignations. For example, my original Appendix D may later become Appendix E if I insert a new additional appendix above the original Appendix D; and that will render incorrect any plain-text references I've already made to "Appendix D" in my main section.

I'm assuming that there must be some way to create dynamic headings for, and in-text references to, these appendices. Ideally, I would like two things to happen any time I add a new appendix above pre-existing appendix/ces. Firstly, the subsequent appendices' headings should automatically update (eg, the heading 'Appendix D' will automatically change to 'Appendix E'; the heading 'Appendix E' will automatically change to 'Appendix F'; etc). Secondly, any references I've made to, say, 'Appendix D' in the text of the main section, should automatically turn into to 'Appendix E', etc.

I've had a look online but can't seem to find the exact steps required to make this happen. It might have something to do with table of contents and/or headings settings (both of which I'm very rusty on), but the articles and answers I've looked at so far seem to begin at the halfway point, when half of the steps I need to know have already been undertaken. Does anybody know how I could proceed with this? Thank you for your help.

Answer 1

I'm not sure if the formatting I've done (described, rather awkwardly, in my previous post) counts as direct formatting or not, although I suppose it must count given the subsequent cross-referencing issue. I don't suppose anybody knows if there is a better way of adjusting the appendix titles that doesn't involve direct formatting, but which will still propagate to every new appendix title?

Answer 2

To change the formatting of all appendix titles, modify the style that is applied to the titles. This formatting will also apply to the paragraph number unless you have directly modified its formatting through the Define New Multilevel List dialog.

Answer 3

I assumed that you had been using the built-in headings for the appendix, but the same principle applies to any paragraph style.

To remove direct formatting (that is, formatting which is not saved in the paragraph style applied to a paragraph), you can do the following: Select the text of the paragraph. Press Ctrl+SpaceBar to remove direct font formatting (font, size, italic, bold, underline, etc. not in style) and press Ctrl+Q to remove direct paragraph formatting (spacing before/after, line spacing, etc.).

Answer 4

I've just tried CTRL + SpaceBar; the appendix heading text looks the same after I've done this, but presumably any formatting of the wrong type has been removed. Unfortunately, adding a new cross-reference to that appendix still yields the same in-paragraph font size issue. I tried applying CTRL + Q as well; this removed the numbering part of the heading title, ie the "Appendix 1 - " part. I might have been able to work around that by manually re-entering it, but I found that without numbered that part of the heading title, that appendix doesn't appear in the list of items that can be cross-referenced. I tried searching for headings to cross-reference, instead of numbered items, but no 'cross-refererencable' items showed up.

Thank you for looking into this, but it seems that what I want either isn't possible in Word, or it will take up too much time to achieve it and won't be easily replicable in other documents without generating problems anew.

Answer 5

The fact that Ctrl+Q removes the numbering tells me that numbering hasn't been set up properly. You really should associate numbering with the styles.