Publisher Cross-references - Note enhancements

[mwdiers]

I'm working on converting a large InDesign book to Publisher. The Cross-References feature was the last piece I needed to move entirely to Publisher. I was pleased to discover that cross-references work properly across chapters in a book. I was afraid that would be overlooked.

In the book I am working on, there are a large number of cross-references to footnotes, and the reference includes both a page and note number thusly: "p. <page number>, n. <note number>."

The only working option at present to refer to these is by Paragraph. However, the paragraphs do not show the note number in the "Insert-Cross References" dialog box, so even if I filter on my "Footnote" style, it's a pain to find the correct note.

Therefore, I am suggesting that "Note" be added as a link-to type, such that it displays the current note number in the Insert Cross-Reference dialog box.

If that is not feasible, alternately, please make it possible to use a named anchor in a note. At present, when using the "Anchor" type, and the anchor is in a note, the "Note Number" field does not work. It always displays "0". Page Number does work correctly. I believe this is a bug, and I reported this in the bugs forum already.

I would prefer that Anchors work correctly with notes, because some of my footnotes span more than one page, and sometimes the reference should point to a place in the note on a later page. The only workaround for this is to combine two cross references. One for the page number using an anchor reference, and one for the note number using a paragraph reference. Not ideal.

[MikeTO]

Hi, I can't duplicate this issue, it works for me. I created footnotes in one chapter and then created cross-references in another chapter. I selected Note Number from the Text field's menu in Cross-References to insert the footnote number.

I tried it with paragraph and anchor and both worked fine. It's best to insert the anchors at the start of the note or paragraph but I also tested it with an anchor in the middle of the paragraph, too.

Here's a test doc (not a book chapter) showing how to do it. The first CR targets the footnote paragraph (which created an automatic anchor at the start of the note) and I chose Note Number from the Text field's menu. The second CR targets the first anchor I created which I manually added to the start of the note and the third CR targets the second anchor I added on the second page of the note since this note was split across pages as you said you sometimes have to do. Everything worked great for me. Does this document work for you? Open it and update CRs to ensure it's all working correctly.

test.afpub 

[mwdiers]

And now, of course, it's working as expected, even with my document. Sigh.

No idea why it didn't work before, since there is nothing special about Paragraph references. Until you explained the above, I didn't realize that choosing a paragraph is just  a shortcut for creating an anchor.

Thank you for your help.

[MikeTO]

12 hours ago, mwdiers said:

And now, of course, it's working as expected, even with my document. Sigh.

No idea why it didn't work before, since there is nothing special about Paragraph references. Until you explained the above, I didn't realize that choosing a paragraph is just  a shortcut for creating an anchor.

I wrote extensively about cross-references in the PDF manual I shared through the link in my signature. You can download it from this forum.

Cheers