Saturday, November 26, 2011

UseCrossReference in MS Word


Working with figures
First, lets insert a figure in a document.  Place cursor at where the figure is going to be inserted.  Click on "Insert" -> "Reference" -> "Catpion".

A dialog box should pop up.  Enter the name of the figure, click OK.
Now, Figure 1 is created, named "This is figure one.".
Similarly, I created Figure 2, named "This is figure two.". Then, we can insert the figure number into the text, as "Figure 1".  Place the mouse cursor to where you want to insert the figure number.  Click on "Insert" -> "Reference" -> "Cross-reference".

In the dialog box, select "Figure" as "Reference type", then select "Only label and number", pick "Figure 1 ...", click "Insert".

Now, we have Figure inserted in the text.


So, we have Figure 1 and 2 in the text. What happens if I want to insert another figure at the very beginning of the document.  I inserted another figure named, "This is the third figure." at the begining.  It is automatically inserted as figure 1.  Notice that, the original figure 1 is now figure 2.  But the number in the text is not change

Instead of searching and replacing all the figure numbers in the text, click "Edit" -> "Select All" (or, Ctrl + A), which select the entire document, then, press "F9".  This updates all the figure number automatically.

I assume you will say, this looks good, if you never used this before. Then, what if I want to move figures around?
I then switched the positions of Figure 2 and 3.

And then, press Ctrl+A, then F9. This automatically updates my figures.