Karen, on your behalf, I tried to find a workaround, but I've come up short. I think this is a Flare shortcoming, so definitely submit a feature request/bug report (assuming one hasn't already been submitted).
Now I'd like to address a few misconceptions expressed in this thread.
First, it is perfectly OK to use a hyperlink to another location within the same document.
Second, the intent of a cross-reference is not to act "like a snippet for a link." Although it's fine to put a cross-reference in a snippet and then drop that snippet in where needed, the snippet is not necessary, as one can easily insert a cross-reference wherever needed.
A cross-reference is a specialized form of a link, and in my practice and that of many others, a cross-reference is preferable to a hyperlink in most circumstances. In fact, as of Flare 11, the default action now for dragging a topic from the Content Explorer into a topic in the XML Editor will result in a cross-reference, not a hyperlink. (That default is user-definable, for those who like the old action.) The only circumstances in which I continue to use hyperlinks is when linking to websites or files external to the Flare project.
Cross-references are superior to hyperlinks in many ways. For one, the human-readable text of the cross-reference will always match the first heading in the destination topic to which it points. So say a cross-reference points to a topic whose first reading reads "Care and feeding of cats", and then say that that destination topic is edited so the heading now reads "Care and feeding of kittens and cats". When output is generated, every cross-reference to that destination topic will show "Care and feeding of kittens and cats", without the Flare author having to update any of them. This is not true of a hyperlink, for which, whatever the text of the link, that shall be the text always, unless the Flare author deliberately edits it.
Another advantage of using cross-reference is that the Flare author can define a variety of formats for how a cross-reference will be rendered, depending on the output. For example, in many of my projects, I style a cross-reference in print output to be formatted (not the actual Flare coding, by the way) as "Topic heading" (page x), so I can end up with passages such as these:
For more information, see "Care and feeding of kittens and cats" (page 5).
See "Care and feeding of kittens and cats" (page 5).
Techniques for feeding very young kittens with a dropper are covered in "Care and feeding of kittens and cats" (page 5).
But I format the same cross-references in online output to mimic hyperlinks, so they will look like this:
For more information, see
Care and feeding of kittens and cats.
See
Care and feeding of kittens and cats.
Techniques for feeding very young kittens with a dropper are covered in
Care and feeding of kittens and cats.
In any case, I encourage all Flare users who are not using cross-references as a standard part of their practice to consider making the switch. Detailed coverage is here:
http://webhelp.madcapsoftware.com/flare ... rences.htm
http://docs.madcapsoftware.com/FlareV11 ... sGuide.pdf, particularly Chapter 4.
Lastly, the full Analyzer product has a feature that suggests opportunities for cross-references. I haven't used that feature myself (because I use cross-references by habit), but as I understand it, it helps to identify hyperlinks that could be reworked as cross-references. It doesn't do that rework automatically, but it at least identifies opportunities.
