One way is the following: Insert the illustrations (the source
document) in the main document (the target) via an IncludeText field.
If you want an easy way to exclude the illustrations as you print the
target document, just put a section break before the IncludeText
field.

To insert the field: Place the insertion point at the desired
location and, on the Insert menu, click File. Locate the source. Click
the arrow next to the Insert button, and choose to "Insert as Link".
With field codes displayed (use Alt+F9 as a toggle), the field will
look something like this:
{ INCLUDETEXT "C:\\folder1\\folder2\\...\\folderN\\filename. doc" }.

If you created your captions via InsertReferenceCaption, you can use
InsertReferenceCross-Reference to cross-reference the captions in
the inserted document. However, since inserting cross-references
modifies the referenced text, you have to place the cursor inside it
and press Ctrl+Shift+F7 to save the changes to the source document.

If you don't want to save the source, you can bookmark the relevant
entries with the target document closed, and then open the target,
update the IncludeText field and create the cross-references (to
bookmarks).

If you don't want to insert the illustrations, you can reference the
bookmarks directly, instead, from the source file. But that means one
IncludeText field for each cross-reference, and if you ever need to
move the files to a different location, there will be a lot of field
codes to edit (since relative paths are not allowed, as far as I
know).

For more about IncludeText fields, see Word Help and
http://daiya.mvps.org/includetext.htm.

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP


"anon k" wrote in message
...
I'm trying to assemble a large document, and many of the included
(sub-)documents refer to the same illustrations. The illustrations
all
go into one file of their own.

This results in several advantages: one image can be repeatedly
cited
and still easily found; the whole run of illustrations can be
printed on
a different paper stock; it eliminates problems from Word's shoddy
text
flow algorithms that routinely ram illustrations into the margins
and
separate them from their captions.

The question is, how should I insert the cross-references?