MS Word 2007 - Link/Duplicate text?

philhway

Hey,

Wasn't sure where to post this.

I am currently putting together a long MS Word 2007 document which will have parts added, taken out and moved around over the next year.

I am hoping someone can tell me if there is an easy way to link/duplicate text........throughout the document I will have figures and tables with headings e.g. Figure 1.4 etc........When writing the text of the document I usually refer to the figures/tables by saying "Blah blah (see Figure 1.4).

The problem is that Figure 1.4 may become Figure 1.5, 2.6 etc as I add to and change around the document......Is there a way to make the text automatically update to whatever I change the figure title to?

Thanks

Phil.

di11on

A word of advice which comes from painful experience -

If your document will be long - I would reccomend strongly that you break it up into smaller documents. Also, backup very frequently. Word can just go ape and corrupt the whole thing. The risk of this seems to increase, the longer your document. It also will be a lot easier to manage. You can combine them all at the end if you need to.

In answer to your question - this is one way of doing it in Word 2003, should be easy to replicate in word 2007.

Create a document with the text you want to repeat or include in your main document. Save it and remember path/filename.

In your main document: Insert -> Field

- Choose "Include Text" from the list.
- Type in the path and filename in the box.
Hit ok and you're done!

philhway

Thanks for the advice, I have been backing up several copies in case it corrupts!

When you say remember the "path/filename".....where do I get this?

Is there a specific path/filename for each word in the document? e.g. if i have "Figure 1.3 Pie Chart" is there a path/filename which will relate to this?

(Excuse my ignorance..)

di11on

philhway wrote: »

Thanks for the advice, I have been backing up several copies in case it corrupts!

When you say remember the "path/filename".....where do I get this?

Is there a specific path/filename for each word in the document? e.g. if i have "Figure 1.3 Pie Chart" is there a path/filename which will relate to this?

(Excuse my ignorance..)

Hi Phil,

Sorry, I just re-read your post and I think I got the wrong end of the stick the first time. The suggestion above is for when you want to reporduce a large block of text many times within a document.

However, if you just want to index a figure or a diagram dynamically, this is easier.

Step 1: To put a label on a figure, follow these steps:
- Insert -> Reference -> Caption
- The number of the caption will automatically be incremented.

Step 2: To insert a reference to the above within your document, follow these steps:
- Insert -> Reference -> Cross Reference
- Choose "figure" as the reference type
- Below this, a list will appear of all the captions you've created so far, choose whichever you want to insert.

Now, if you were to go back to the start of your document and insert a new figure and follow step 1 to create a caption for it - this will now become "Figure 1" and all subsequent labels will be updated. I.e Figure 1 now becomes Figure 2 etc. Any references to these also get updated in the text. (Sometimes you might need to right click on the references and choose "Update Reference").

Hope this helps.

philhway

Perfect....thanks for the help!

di11on

No probs - best of luck with the project.

Alanstrainor

Moved from laptops.