| |
Cross-Referencing
in MS Word
In
our Web-conscious society, it may be a temptation to use hyperlinks in
a long Word document to refer readers to areas in the same document, so
that they can immediate jump to the reference. A more traditional (and
more commonly used) technique is to use cross-references. Anyone who has
done any research should be familiar with cross-referencing -- it usually
features phrases such as "For detailed statistics, see Table 2" or "See
'How to Read Statistics' later in this document."
Cross-references
are easy to set up in MS Word, and you have several options to choose
from. You can add cross-references that point to a variety of objects,
such as figures and tables. You can also reference text using two different
techniques: styles and bookmarks.
Adding
A Cross-Reference To A Table Or Figure Let's suppose that you want to
have a cross reference on page 8 of your document that refers to a table
on page 10. The reference text reads "For detailed statistics, see Table
2." The table on page 10 has the caption: Table 2: Marriage Statistics
by County. A cross-reference consists of two parts: the static text that
describes what you're pointing to and the reference itself. For example,
in our example "For detailed statistics, see Table 2," everything up to
"Table 2" is static text. To add a cross-reference pointing to Table 2:
- Type
the text you want for the static text. For example, enter "For detailed
statistics, see" followed by a space.
-
Use the Insert/Cross-Reference (Word 97 or 2000) or Insert/Reference/Cross-Reference
(Word 2002 and 2003) command to open the Cross-reference dialog box.
-
There are a variety of object types you can reference in the "Reference
type" pull-down menu. In our example, choose Table.
-
In the "For which caption" section of the dialog box, Word will display
all the tables currently defined in the document that contain captions.
Choose the table you want to reference, which in this case is Table
2: Marriage Statistics by County."
-
In the "Insert reference to:" pull-down menu, select what you want the
cross-reference to display: · Entire caption will display "Table 2:
Marriage Statistics by County." · Only label and number will display
"Table 2." · Only caption text will display "Marriage Statistics by
County." · Page number will display the page number where the table
begins. If this option is selected, Word will enable the "Include above/below"
checkbox -- see next option. · Above/below
will insert the word "above" or "below" depending on where the table
is relative to the cross-reference. Since our table is on page 10 and
we're inserting the cross-reference on page 8, "below" will be displayed.
-
If you want the reference to act as a hyperlink, check the "Insert as
hyperlink" box.
- The
"Cross-reference" dialog box doesn't disappear automatically. If you
want to add other information to the citation, position your cursor
anywhere in the text and insert as many other cross-reference elements
as you wish, such as the page number of the table. (In this example,
we only want the entire caption in the cross-reference citation, so
we would skip this step.)
-
When you are done, click on the Insert button in the "Cross-reference"
dialog box. Adding A Reference To Text You can also add a cross-reference
to a section of your document. For instance, if you have a section titled
"Marriage Trends 1993-2003" later in the document, you can include a
cross-reference to this section in one of two ways:
A)
Make sure the title of the section uses a Heading style (Heading
1, Heading 2, etc.). If it doesn't, you can use the Format/Styles
and Formatting commands to get started.
B)
Apply a bookmark to the beginning of the text. Once the section
title has either a heading style or is associated with a bookmark,
you can insert the cross-reference.
The
process is similar to the steps for adding a cross-reference to a
table or figure: Enter the static text for the citation, use the Insert/Cross-reference
(or Insert/Reference/Cross-reference) command, choose Heading or Bookmark
from the "Reference type" pull-down menu, choose the heading text
or bookmark name from the list, choose options from the "Insert reference
to" drop-down menu, repeat for as many elements as you wish to add
to the citation, click Insert, and you're done.
Cross-Referencing A Numbered List if you have step-by-step instructions,
you can insert a cross-reference to one of these steps. Simply choose
Numbered item as the "Reference type" in the "Cross-reference" dialog
box.
RETURN
TO TIPS AND TRICKS PAGE |