Sequential Reference List (97+)

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Hi All,

Word provides tools for creating a list and cross-references to items in the list. So I can re-order items in my list and then update the cross-reference fields and everything is taken care of.

My need is slightly different. My requirement is to have references (to books, articles, whatever) occur in the order mentioned in the text. If I move the text around, I want my reference list to be re-ordered (re-sorted) and the corresponding text to point to the new numbers for the items in the reference list.

For example:
Original:
yada yada yada see Reference 1
stuff and make sure to see Reference 2

Reference List.
1. The Good Book
2. War and Peace

Move Text around so it reads:
stuff and make sure to see Reference 1
yada yada yada see Reference 2

Reference List
1. War and Peace
2. The Good Book

I don’t think this is something Word does (except perhaps XP which I’ve not used).

VBA is acceptable. I’m thinking something with bookmarks on the original text that does the referencing. However, would want to automate the process somewhat so I don’t have to create the bookmarks manually. So maybe a button to click when ready to add the reference that bookmarks the text (eg, “Reference 1” or maybe just the “1” above – probably not hard). When I move text around, I could invoke a 2nd subroutine that checks for the bookmarks, re-orders the reference list in the order they appear, and update the cross-reference fields that point to the list (certainly harder to me).

This is well beyond my Word VBA coding capabilities..

Ideas?

Thanks.

Fred

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Fred

Isn’t this what Footnotes and Endnotes do? You don’t need to put the numbering in yourself – that happens automatically.

If you didn’t want to use footnotes or endnotes then you could use a SEQ field to do the numbering and then add bookmarks and cross references. This would also do the renumbering for you automatically but the whole process is more involved (and flexible) than foot/endnotes.

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Andrew and Jefferson,

I don’t think I can use footnotes or endnotes since the text itself may have real footnotes/endnotes. In all likelihood, only 1 of them but not sure which one. Since this is for a book, it is not clear what the publisher’s guidelines are for references, so a superscript may not be acceptable.

I was also thinking of SEQ but this is more involved as observed. That’s kind of where I was heading with my original post.

I need to look at Trish’s suggestion on TOC.

THanks.

Fred

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Piling on, I recommend endnotes. If you want to finish with actual document text rather than endnotes, you can, at the last minute, with a macro, “convert” them to text. (Hopefully we’ll have search turned back on before you need this. )

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I’ve performed something similar to this, wherein I was wanting a sequential Index at the end of the document. If you want the Reference List to appear together in a location, this may help… What I do is tweak the TOC (since it is sequential). To do this you need to manually mark the references. Highlight the words, or simply place the cursor where you want the TOC entry to occur. Press Alt+Shift+O to get access to the TOC Entry dialog. If you highlighted text it should appear in the Entry; otherwise type in text desired. Next, change the Table Identifier to anything but C (C is reserved for TOC)… I change mine to X (hence IndeX). Choose a level that you are sure will never appear in the TOC (usually TOC only uses up to 4 levels… so if my Index only requires 2 levels, I will take 8 and 9). Continue to mark all entries using the above process. Where you want the entries to appear, insert the TOC field code so that it looks like this: {TOC f “X” l “8-9” n “8-9” *MERGEFORMAT} – Where the switch f defines the Table you specified when marking the entries; l defines the levels you wish to include (if only 1 level then it would be “9-9”); and n defines that you do not want page numbers on the stated levels (if only 1 level then it would be “9-9″). After updating the field, all the entries should appear with the Style TOC 9 (usually indented 1.33” – Change any formatting and update the style). Hope this helps… trish

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