Cross-references broken in Word output

[Juliane]

Hi everyone,

I am currently working on a migration project Word to MadCap Flare and have come across yet another problem that I am struggling to solve by myself The cross-references work fine in the XML editor (medium set to print) and also in the topic preview but when I produce a Word output, they are broken: the text is blue & underlined but it's not clickable. First I thought this is a stylesheet issue (the import produced six classes of the <MadCap|xref> tag) but even when I assign the <MadCap|xref> tag to a cross-reference or insert a completely new cross-reference I have the same issue.

I went back to my existing Flare project (from which I used the master page, stylesheet, variable set, etc. for the import project) and checked the cross-references there: same issue! In that project I have a web help target and several Word targets. The cross-references work in the web help target but not in the Word target. This seems to have gone unnoticed so far because there are only very few cross-references, we mostly have hyperlinks and these work in the Word targets. Also, there is no error message pointing out a problem with the cross-references when I produce a Word target in that project. Shouldn't Flare tell me if something is wrong with the cross-references?

Does anyone know what could be the reason for a cross-reference working in the web help but broken in a Word target?

If you need more information, let me know.

Thanks a lot in advance,

Juliane

[ChoccieMuffin]

Can't give you any specifics on this one, other than the fact that cross-refs in Word are notoriously flaky. They tend to refer to some obscure number that falls over at the drop of a hat. I have in the past had a Word doc that I only ever played with in Word that contained hundreds of x-refs and the flipping thing was forever falling over. So have a moan at Microsoft for this one, it could well be their fault and not MadCap's.

[Juliane]

If anyone else is wondering why cross-references are not clickable in Word output: This is a feature and not a bug, only the {page} part is clickable, any other parts, e.g. {paranum}, {paratext} are never clickable I got this information from MadCap Technical Support.

[berniexmeyer]

Thanks for that, Juliane. I also noticed that my autonumbering broke in the WORD output, and when I emailed the WORD doc to a coworker, on their machine, the referenced images also disappeared, because they were residing on my local PC. Do you know if there's a way to configure WORD targets to just make copies of the images in teh WORD doc, rather than continuing to reference them?

[LTinker68]

Do you know if there's a way to configure WORD targets to just make copies of the images in teh WORD doc, rather than continuing to reference them?

See this KB article --> http://kb.madcapsoftware.com/default_CSH.htm#OUTPW1010F

[berniexmeyer]

Lisa: Thanks for rhe reference. I tried this technique. Out of some hundred illustrations, it worked on a few, but made the rest disappear, leaving a rectangular object with no image. If you have any idea why this happened, and more importantly, if there is a remedy, I'd be very happy.
- Bernie

[LTinker68]

Nope, that process has always worked for me. Not sure why some of the images wouldn't come through. Are the missing images free-standing images, or ones used as backgrounds or bullet icons or anything like that?

[whunter]

You might want to try scrolling to the end of the Word document first, to ensure all the images are loaded, before breaking the links.

[berniexmeyer]

Did that, per the instructions in the article, and clicked on the last page (which was blank) for good measure. No go. But thanks for offering that suggestion.

[LTinker68]

Did you try this on the file in its output folder, or did you move the file to another location on your computer before you tried it?

[berniexmeyer]

I did it in its default output folder. The images that disappeared were mostly screen captures. Little icon images may have disappeared, but I did not check for that.

[LTinker68]

Are the images missing when you first build the output, before you embed the images and move the file? One of your earlier posts implied that the images were there until you did the embed then disappeared, but perhaps they were missing before but you didn't notice that until you tried embedding them.

If they were missing before embedding, then I'd check conditions on the image tag, the image's container tag (e.g., <p> tag), and the images folder and sub-folders. If you're like me, you might have icons in one images sub-folder and screenshots in other sub-folders. Perhaps you set the wrong condition on one of those sub-folders, which would explain why the icons came through but not the screenshots.

[wclass]

Word doesn't always load the images in a document so that it can save time as it opens. This means that to force the images to load you have to visit each page with an image - did you browse through each page or just jump to the end? This problem is usually only seen in large documents.
The embed links function should work once the images are loaded.

[berniexmeyer]

I just skipped to the end; it is a Looooong document. By "visit" every page, you just mean scroll through it and wait for the picture to load on each page, right? Or do you mean actually touch each page with the cursor?

[Nita Beck]

I just skipped to the end; it is a Looooong document. By "visit" every page, you just mean scroll through it and wait for the picture to load on each page, right? Or do you mean actually touch each page with the cursor?

Yes, that is what you'll have to do, based on my experience. I'm not sure if you need to "touch" each page, but you definitely need to visit each page in order to give Word a chance to load the image.

[berniexmeyer]

Thanks, Nita. I'll give it a shot---after my fast approaching 6/28 deadline.