Cross reference - reference type fields disappeared

Question

Hi everyone, I desperately need urgent help.

I am writing my masters thesis and finally thought I had finished. I created an autotext field which automatically inserts a table where I can place an equation and it is automatically numbered. I can then cross reference the equation using the unique tag which i labelled "eq", this would appear in the cross reference drop down. I edited the document and accepted all changes and then selected all and updated all the fields by pressing F9. I noticed some of the cross references showed a reference error and when I tried to re reference it, the unique equation field I had was no longer in the drop down. I also noted in the citation dialog that all my unique tags I created had disappeared.

I cant find anyway to retrieve the information. only a few of the cross references showed errors, but I dont know how to cross reference the ones that display errors without redoing all the equations or referencing manually..

Please help

Answer 1

As Suzanne wrote, you will have to recreate the caption label (because the each label is saved in the Normal template, not in the specific documents where you are using it).

However, a missing caption label shouldn't cause any trouble with existing cross-references, and therefore we need more information. For example, what is the exact message that you see?

Also, note that you can create cross-references even if the caption label is missing. Just enclose the piece of text in a bookmark and create the cross-reference to bookmark text.

Answer 2

Custom caption labels are stored in the Normal template. If you are moving this document from one machine to another, the "eq" caption label (and hence the cross-references) will not be present until it is created on that machine and stored in that copy of Normal.dotm.

Answer 3

Thanks for the follow-up. That specific message suggests that the bookmark to which the cross-reference is pointing has disappeared.

Unfortunately, you can easily "destroy" a bookmark in Word. For example, if you press Enter and/or type text at the beginning of a bookmarked/cross-referenced paragraph, the added content will end up inside the bookmark, which may lead to trouble.

You've already found the easiest fix: just recreate the original cross-reference.

To work around the problem in the future, avoid adding any kind of content at the beginning of a bookmarked paragraph.