Cross-references lost

[Gianni Becattini]

My APub book often lose the cross-references, and I am forced to rebuild them.

Just another bug or may I be wrong in something?

[walt.farrell]

What do you mean by "lose"?

We'll need examples (screenshots), and more information about the structure of the book, what cross-references you lose, etc.

8 hours ago, Gianni Becattini said:

Just another bug or may I be wrong in something?

With the information so far, the answer is yes (it's one of those two).

[Gianni Becattini]

In (1) you can see the current situation. On the left you see the book and in the page there is something like a hand-crafted TOC. On the left, you can see the C-R list. Until yesterday, they were all OK. Now the ? says that they cannot be found. I already noted that the Name is often wrong, but the page number is however OK.

In (2) you see the target page (the paragraph "The 300-Series" in Main Section Title style:

In (4) I open the C-R in Edit

In (5) I deleted the C-R and try to build a new one, like it was before.

Surprise! The new C-R says "Page 12" instead of "Page 96", as it was expected, and also the C-R name is wrong (both are from another chapter, that in addition is currently closed). Or I made another mistake inside my mistake, or it is another bug inside a bug, I believe... (not ironic, really asking). 

I add another post following this....

[Gianni Becattini]

I tried also with the other C-Rs. Whatever I do, (also with the other C-Rs) I get only and always page 500-Series/page 12 and not what it should.

So, for what I see, it is that not only I lost the links, but it seems impossible to recreate them.

No problem uploading all you want... 

[walt.farrell]

Have you tried opening the chapter files from the Books panel?

We know from other reports that there is an issue with Cross References to closed chapter files.

[MikeTO]

Hi, this is a bit difficult to understand without seeing the actual files.

It's common to break a cross-reference for the paragraph text but not the page number if you target an anchor that is updated by Publisher.

For example, if I type "Title" in Heading 1 and generate a TOC, Publisher will generate a TOC anchor for Title. I can target that TOC anchor with a cross reference. For this example, let's say I target the paragraph text (Title) and page number (123).

If I then edit the word Title and change it to "Big Title", the cross reference for the paragraph text will be out of date while the page number won't be. The workaround is to edit the cross-ref and re-select the target. I don't think you should have to do this but it's the way it works.

But the TOC is outdated so if you update the TOC, Publisher will insert a second anchor. There will be one for the original Title and one for the updated "Big Title". You have to re-target the cross-reference to the new anchor.

It's more complicated with Books of course. I don't know why you're getting the wrong page number but I'd get it's using the page number within the chapter rather than the page number within the Book. Maybe try updating numbering for the Book first.

Good luck.

[Gianni Becattini]

I normally open them from the book panel.

I made other tests, also deleting all the C-Rs... but no change, it takes always the same point.

[Gianni Becattini]

So now the only way is to create them manually?

[MikeTO]

2 minutes ago, Gianni Becattini said:

So now the only way is to create them manually?

You should be able to get it to work, I'm using cross-references in my books and now that I understand how it works and how to workaround one issue I'm not having any problems.. I've probably created more cross-references in Publisher than anybody else so far as I created hundreds of them over and over again while working on the Publisher manual. I had to keep deleting them and starting over until one bug was fixed and I found a workaround for another issue.

I did extensive testing of cross-references with Books and didn't experience the wrong page number issue so I can't advise what might be wrong without seeing the files. My guess is that it's related to absolute vs. relative page numbers (page number relative to the place in the Book) but why this would happen I don't know.

[Gianni Becattini]

Some information, don't know how useful.

I created a brand new book (by the way: it is very annoying that as default APub sets "start from page number" for each chapter instead of "continue numbering". I could not find a way to set them all, you must go along with each of them).

I did not add the "500-Series" chapter, but... even destroying all the references and creating new ones, again appears always the "500-Series" cross reference.

So the wrong information must be stored in the other chapters. Perhaps the first one with my pseudo-TOC?

[Gianni Becattini]

I believe I found something... 

I created a new file with just my TOC: same problem

I added a true TOC: it worked OK

Eventually I discovered that the wrong information is in the referenced paragraph (Main Section Title in my case). Deleting them and creating new ones, the cross-references return to work.

But why have they got damaged?

And why the "true-TOC" can see them correctly? A reference should be a reference....

[MikeTO]

"Deleting them" - what did you delete? I think your anchor was probably outdated but I can't be sure what's going on.

[Gianni Becattini]

The item pointed by the cross reference is inside a text frame, containing just a title in style Main Section Title. I delete the text frame, create a new one (identical) and then I can create a new working cross reference.

[Gianni Becattini]

In addition:

• if you clear the target style and then apply it again nothing changes (KO)
• if you just delete not the text frame but just the text and then you type it in again, it often works OK
• the CR naming behavior is very strange; see the attachment. Sometimes it include the text after the dash, other times it doesn't - the naming seems to be connected with the problem. If you get a wrong name, it is a sign that something will go wrong. In my cases, it got often the name of another CR.
• I tried also to delete the pointed text AND the CR. Often, when you try to re-create a new one, the old name is retained even if you change completely the text. In other words, it seems that when you create the CR, some hidden info is retained in the pointed text frame, where probably the problem is.
• another bad sign is when you get no chapter number in the table
• in conclusion, to be safe, when you have problems like these, it is better to delete the destination text frame and create it again. In this way I never had problems again (until now 😁).

I have verified more times what I said.

[MikeTO]

1 hour ago, Gianni Becattini said:

In addition:

• if you clear the target style and then apply it again nothing changes (KO)
• if you just delete not the text frame but just the text and then you type it in again, it often works OK
• the CR naming behavior is very strange; see the attachment. Sometimes it include the text after the dash, other times it doesn't - the naming seems to be connected with the problem. If you get a wrong name, it is a sign that something will go wrong. In my cases, it got often the name of another CR.
• I tried also to delete the pointed text AND the CR. Often, when you try to re-create a new one, the old name is retained even if you change completely the text. In other words, it seems that when you create the CR, some hidden info is retained in the pointed text frame, where probably the problem is.
• another bad sign is when you get no chapter number in the table
• in conclusion, to be safe, when you have problems like these, it is better to delete the destination text frame and create it again. In this way I never had problems again (until now 😁).

I have verified more times what I said.

There's no need to delete the text frame. Delete the cross ref if you must but deleting the target frame doesn't do anything.

Don't worry about the dash in the names in the panel, that's just the way Publisher truncates the text. It's not important.

if you're having problems, I recommend targeting anchors rather than paragraphs. Turn on Show Anchors and then you'll know exactly where the target is. You can delete the anchor if all else fails.

Cheers

 

[Gianni Becattini]

Mhhhh... I am sure that "something" remains in the text frame... I lost too time on this point and now I must recover, but when I can I will make a video.

Thanks for the advice for anchors, I will follow it!