Affinity Publisher 2: Cross Reference Mystery

[Stephen - TGF]

Hey there,

Let me start with, I'm likely doing something wrong but as I can't work it out I thought I'd ask the specialists. I fully expect this to be user error.

I'm writing a choose your own adventure style gamebook called Rage at the Moon. I thought the best way to create links within the document would be cross-references although I'll be honest, I've never used those before. It seems to be working, however certain links are coming out incorrectly and I can't understand why. 

Here are some screen shots.

 

I've added the yellow dot for where things aren't working as I expect them to. The anchor is named 45, but when I cross reference to it, the number shows as 5. The other two references, 89, 204 both worked as expected. 

I've also checked and the link is to paragraph 5, rather than 45 as I want it to be.

Now you can tell me what I'm doing wrong!

Thanks

Stephen

[MikeTO]

I can't duplicate this on macOS but it's possible there's a Windows-specific issue with this dialog.

It would be interesting to try this test on Windows. Create the document. Create a text frame and in it create an anchor and name it 5. Press Return. Create another anchor and name it 45. Press Return. Add a cross-reference to anchor 45 with AnchorName in the Text field.

I also tried it with anchor 5 created after 45 and positioned after 45.

[Stephen - TGF]

Thanks Mike.

The solution I've found is to completely delete the offending anchor, then recreate it. If I just amend it, the error stays, deletion then recreation appears to be the trick. Thankfully the error hasn't repeated itself in the later numbers. Anchors 1-70 ish were the rogue ones and not consistently. I'm going to chalk it up to one of those things as I need to press on writing the book!

On a related point, the FIND command doesn't locate cross-reference text in the document. Which isn't helpful. (I know there is a dialogue box for cross-references, and I need to spend more time with it but so far I can't get it to sort numerically properly. 

[MikeTO]

4 hours ago, Stephen - TGF said:

On a related point, the FIND command doesn't locate cross-reference text in the document. Which isn't helpful. (I know there is a dialogue box for cross-references, and I need to spend more time with it but so far I can't get it to sort numerically properly. 

Cross-references are fields and the text in a field cannot be found with Find and Replace. Unfortunately, this is a limitation for all fields.

[Stephen - TGF]

Ah, good to know. Thanks Mike.