Cross References

Cross references are cousins of text variables with a bit of TOC genes thrown in. They refer to and can echo text that uses a certain paragraph style, and they most often cite the page on which to find it—e.g., “see Hogwarts on page 993.” Since cross references are also hyperlinks in electronic documents like ePub, I often suppress the appearance of page numbers there. The Cross References panel can be opened via Window > Type & Tables.

The Destination

If you need to refer to a word or phrase rather than a paragraph, you can make it a named text anchor. Usually, I’m referring to entire short paragraphs, like headers, or to parts of paragraphs, like their numbers (when the Bullets and Numbering feature is used, a common scenario for figures or tables).

To create a text anchor, highlight the text to which you anticipate making a reference later. Go to the Cross-References panel menu and choose New Hyperlink Destination…. For Type, choose Text Anchor. The Name is important, as it will be the text cited in the cross reference. When hidden characters are visible, the anchor will look like a colon. The TOC feature also has the option to create text anchors, so you may see some already.

A future cross reference doesn’t have to use a text anchor; it can cite an entire paragraph, a paragraph number if it exists (or both), or a partial paragraph up to some character you can specify (like a tab). By using the supplied building blocks when editing the reference’s format, you may also include a Chapter Number and a File Name, and you can even apply a character style to portions of the reference. You don’t have to build a lot of text anchors in your documents.

Building a Cross Reference

First, insert the text cursor where you want the reference inserted. If you’re to make reference to text in another document in a Book, make sure that document is open! Then you can use the Cross-References panel menu to choose Insert Cross-Reference… or use the Create New Cross-Reference button at the bottom of the panel. You’ll then be looking at the New Cross-Reference dialog box (see figure on opposite page).

Choose what to Link To: a paragraph or text anchor. Then choose the Document that contains the reference’s destination. If you’re linking to a text anchor, you simply choose its name. If you’re linking to a paragraph, it can get a little trickier. On the left, choose the Paragraph Style that your destination is using. Yes, despite the search feature there, it’s much easier if you know the style. Once the correct style is highlighted, a list of each occurrence in the destination document is presented on the right. If you highlight one of those occurrences and look where your cursor was blinking, you’ll see a preview of the cross reference forming.

The formatting may not be what you want, yet. The built-in list in Format may be sufficient for most needs. If you simply want to cite the page number, choose that. You may choose Full Paragraph & Page Number or Text Anchor Name & Page Number. In the classroom, I often get asked the difference between Full Paragraph and Paragraph Text because few see any difference. There is no difference unless the paragraph uses automatic numbering. If it does, Full Paragraph includes the number and Paragraph Text does not.

Note that there’s a choice for Paragraph Number & Page Number. The example in the figure shows a caption that reads, “Figure 2. A bad day at Cornish College of the Arts!” Everything leading up to the “A” (“Figure 2.” and the em space) is part of the paragraph number as defined in the paragraph style for that caption. So Paragraph Number & Page Number would yield “Figure 2 on page 4.” However, I based my custom format on Paragraph Text & Page Number. I chose that, then clicked the pencil icon to its right, opening the Cross-Reference Formats dialog box (and disabling the preview, sadly).

Since I was making a custom format, I added it by clicking the plus sign (+) at the lower left of the Cross-Reference Formats dialog box. I input a name that mimics the format I’m building so I can readily identify it. The Definition field is where we construct our format by a combination of typing and choosing from the Building Block () or Special Character () menus. Building blocks look like HTML or XML tags using “<” and “>” to form wildcards of sorts:

<paraNum />: “<paraText />” (page <pageNum />)
Figure 2: “A bad day at Cornish College of the Arts!” (page 4)

The above yields the paragraph number; a colon and space I simply typed; the paragraph’s text in quotes; a space; and, in parentheses, the word “page,” a space, and the page number.