Handling of cross-references when importing from Word

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Wintermute
Jr. Propeller Head
Posts: 4
Joined: Fri Mar 03, 2017 3:39 am
Location: Kraków, Poland

Handling of cross-references when importing from Word

Post by Wintermute »

Hi! I've been having a problem with how cross-references are handled when importing a Word document to Flare. Let me first sketch out what I have in the Word doc and what I expect to have in Flare.

I have multiple cross-references to a section at the end of my doc, where all the relevant resources are listed, for example: "For more information, see Our Product Installation Guide."

They all link to bookmarks in the References section, which is structured as follows:

References
1. Our Company Name, Our Product Installation Guide
2. Our Company Name, Our Product Administration Guide
3. Some Other Company, Their Document
etc...

What Flare does is include the entire paragraph from the References section so the cross-reference looks like this: "For more information, see Our Company Name, Our Product Installation Guide."

I would prefer Flare to leave the cross-ref text as is. Is it possible? I'm preparing to import a large number of documents (80+ Word files), so I'm hoping to limit any post-import tweaking to the minimum :)
GregStenhouse
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Joined: Tue May 13, 2008 3:27 pm
Location: Christchurch, New Zealand

Re: Handling of cross-references when importing from Word

Post by GregStenhouse »

Unfortunately that's how xrefs work, if they include {paratext} then it will have the entire heading (or paragraph) text. You have a few options, but this will require fixing in Word pre-import or in Flare afterwards (search and replace may help)
  • Use hyperlinks - where you can define the text as you like. This won't include the page number though - although it looks like you don't have the pageref in there anyway?
  • You could use a style with a madcap autonumber, where the autonumber text is "Our Company Name" or "Some Other Company". Then the xref would theoretically strip out the autonumber leaving the rest as the paratext.
  • Rework your reference section, perhaps use a table so you can bookmark the guide name and not the company name
Wintermute
Jr. Propeller Head
Posts: 4
Joined: Fri Mar 03, 2017 3:39 am
Location: Kraków, Poland

Re: Handling of cross-references when importing from Word

Post by Wintermute »

Thanks for the reply, Greg! I'll probably go with option 3.
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