I sometimes see "Error! Reference source not found". without editing
information the cross-reference refers to. May I know the reason and
solution?

On Wed, 4 May 2005 21:59:10 -0700, "spiderou"
wrote:

I sometimes see "Error! Reference source not found". without editing
information the cross-reference refers to. May I know the reason and
solution?

When you create a cross-reference, you tell it what part of the
document to refer to -- that is the "reference source". It may be a
bookmark, a numbered heading, a table, etc.

If you delete the reference source and then update the
cross-reference, the result will be the error message you quoted. Word
is telling you that it looked for the thing named in the
cross-reference but failed to find it.

Right-click the error message and select Toggle Field Codes. You'll
see something like

{ REF _Ref103043659 \h }

or, if the reference source was a bookmark,

{ REF BookmarkName \h }

In the first case, you'll have to recreate both the reference source
and the cross-reference, because the number you see is randomly
generated by the cross-reference dialog; rebuilding the source isn't
enough. In the second case, just use the Insert Bookmark dialog to
recreate the bookmark, and update the cross-reference again.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org

I am having the same problem. I tried to follow your advice by:

1. Cutting the figure
2. Cutting the caption text
3. Deleting the Caption text and the cross-reference to the figure in the
text.
4. Pasted the figure back in.
5. right-clicking to caption to create a caption.
6. Added period after the figure 1 label (figure 1.) and pasted caption
text in.
7. clicked where the cross-ref goes in the text and then went to
insert|reference|cross-reference
8. Changed type to figure, reference to only label and number and clicked
on Figure 1. Caption text, under for which caption.

And I still get the error message. I have applied all updates to Office 2003.

Ed


"Jay Freedman" wrote:

On Wed, 4 May 2005 21:59:10 -0700, "spiderou"
wrote:

I sometimes see "Error! Reference source not found". without editing
information the cross-reference refers to. May I know the reason and
solution?

When you create a cross-reference, you tell it what part of the
document to refer to -- that is the "reference source". It may be a
bookmark, a numbered heading, a table, etc.

If you delete the reference source and then update the
cross-reference, the result will be the error message you quoted. Word
is telling you that it looked for the thing named in the
cross-reference but failed to find it.

Right-click the error message and select Toggle Field Codes. You'll
see something like

{ REF _Ref103043659 \h }

or, if the reference source was a bookmark,

{ REF BookmarkName \h }

In the first case, you'll have to recreate both the reference source
and the cross-reference, because the number you see is randomly
generated by the cross-reference dialog; rebuilding the source isn't
enough. In the second case, just use the Insert Bookmark dialog to
recreate the bookmark, and update the cross-reference again.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org