captions/ XReferences lost in Word: ERROR: reference source not found

Hi Stefan,

When I click in the error message, it goes dark grey. When I press F9, the dark grey goes out but nothing happen.

I guess my cross-references have lost their paths. I can't say why?

Till now the only way to repair is to re-create the references manually, one by one...

Any other method...

Best

Daniel

Hi Daniel

Any chance you could upload the document to OneDrive or something similar so that I could take a look at it?

I may have a tool to help...

Hi Jacques and Stephan

The book is a music method book

here are the links to my OneDrive space

in French 'Mon Espace'

http://1drv.ms/1IFy24v

in English 'My Space'

http://1drv.ms/1IFy5gL

both are identical (or should be).

You will notice that almost all references are in the text but they are dynamically dead. You can't cross reference and you can't even create a cross reference as 'figure' 'table' are absent from the list

For instance in 'My Space' p24

par 3.3.2.1, you read

However there is a little trick (see Figure 3.10) which ...

The reference Figure 3.10 is correct but dead.

And if you want to create a reference type 'figure' you don't find it in the list

The same goes for 'table'

see p 19

" Today Wolfgang Daiss plays a 14 str tiptar. The tuning is given in Table 3.9..."

the link is dead

if you want to insert a reference type 'table' it is mentioned but no item appear in the list.

although there are hundreds of 'table' and 'figure' in the texts.

In the French text paragraph 1.3

you will find " points, comme représenté en  Error! Reference source not found."

if you want to insert a reference to 'figure' or 'table' they are absent from the list.

Apparently, only the 'headings' are correctly referenced.

Thank you for the help.

Daniel

That does help. My comments refer to the English 'My Space'.

I checked its bookmarks with my Bookmark Manager, and I can see that practically all of your captions have been unlinked, and a large number (but by no means all) of your cross references have been unlinked.

At this point, though, as long as you don't change anything, it's not that bad.

You actually only have three references that point to unlinked captions.

Ideally, we would want to automatically regenerate all of the captions, and while it can be done, it is also fraught with error.

However, that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. :-)

So,

1. Add a Figure caption (might as well do it at the start of your first caption, although I see that the only caption left, the Author one, uses a different style to the remaining unlinked captions. So just sort that out first).

2. Copy the caption you just added.

3. Open the Find and Replace dialog:

4. Click on More to show all the settings.

5. Turn Use wildcards on.

6. Add this to the Find what box:

Figure [0-9]{1,2}.[0-9]{1,2}

(note the upper case F and the space after Figure).

7. Click on Format->Style.

Set the style to Caption.    [This bit is very important!]

8. Add this to the Replace with box:

^c

9. Now click on Replace all (Make sure you are not inside a text box, but in the main document text when you are doing this).

10. Now check through the whole document to check that all your figure captions have been "resurrected."

11. Repeat the process for Table captions.

12. Now, at least you can fix the cross references.

You can use much the same search specification as above, but with the style set to Paragraph, to find most of your cross references. You will have to delete the unlinked text and add the cross reference again (manually!).

That, of course, is the long-term fix, which I recommend you do when you have time.

For the short-term fix, you actually only need to fix those three errant cross references.

To do that, go to each one (search for Error! to find them). Press Shift+F9. This will give you something like: 

{ REF _Ref108077222 } 

in the portion:

"You have to play C C B. (see  Error! Reference source not found.) When you play... "

(One of the others is PAGEREF, but it works the same).

Now, not being musically inclined, I have no idea which figure that refers to. but I am sure you do. You could create a standard bookmark around that (unlinked) figure caption and then just add a reference to the bookmark text.

So, if, for example, that cross reference should point to:

Figure 17.6 – Ascending 2-taps notated A or ▲

(Which, b.t.w., I can see it doesn't, since 17.6 still has its hidden bookmark)

then select only "Figure 17.6" and add a bookmark to that (Ctrl_Shift+F5)

Now you can delete the errant cross reference, and add a new one to the bookmark text.

If you were a purist, you would want to recreate the bookmark _Ref108077222 around the text "Figure 17.6", as this would do away with the requirement of recreating the cross reference, but Word does not allow you to create hidden bookmarks manually, although my Bookmark manager does--You can download it from http://insight.trueinsight.za.com/word/word-utilities. But in all honesty, downloading and installing it and then using it is going to be much more work that just creating three standard bookmarks, and the standard bookmarks will give you the same effect in terms of a short-term fix.

Hello Jacques,

Thank you for your detailed answer.

I shall try the long method later.

But trying to use the short-term fix

So as you said:

"To do that, go to each one (search for Error! to find them)"

So I  searched for ''Error' bur Word answers it didn't find any...

Bizarre.
maybe it does not look at commands like 'ERROR: Reference not found"

No, that can't be it.

I could find it in the  English 'My Space' document you provided (I didn't check the French one).

However, I did notice that you put all the figures and their captions in text boxes. That's why I added the bit about making sure you are not inside a text box when you do the replace all.

So let's try that first.

Position yourself within a normal text paragraph (preferably the very first paragraph of the document) and then try again.

Hello Jacques and Stefan,

I did as you said

Pressed Alt + F9

Positioned myself at paragraph one

Search 'Error' and Word found it

at Paragraph 17.1.1

"You have to play C C B. (see  ERROR:  ..."

it should point to Figure 17.5

After that I could not create bookmark on Figure 17.5 or a reference to it...

I tried what you proposed but it didn't work