Linked page numbering goes haywire when document is updated.

A

Alphy

If I use CTRL+A and F9 or even if I update the TOC or the Index in my Word
2003 document, all the linked page numbering changes; the links go to the
wrong pages; the document gets new page breaks which were never there,
especially where there are links to other sections. All my documents were in
Word 2002 and just recently we updated to Word 2003. I am not sure if that
has anything to do with all this. Are there other things that happen when one
upgrades from Word 2002 to Word 2003?
 
K

Kim

Not sure if this will solve your issue but before you generate your TOC or
TOA make sure your show/hide button is off and you can't see any non-printing
characters. I know if I have citations marked and leave the show/hide button
on and general toc/toa it throws everything off by a page or two.
Unfortunately found this out the hard way years ago after it went to the
judge with all the wrong page numbers. Really annoying that Word can't
figure that one out on it's own.
 
G

Gordon Bentley-Mix on news.microsoft.com

I think the problem may be related to something I described in a previous
thread about cross-references that were behaving badly. (Search this
newsgroup for "hidden bookmarks" and review the thread with the title that
starts "Bug 2..." for the full story.) In that thread, I said (in part) the
following, which might also apply to TOCs and Indices:

"This problem occurs most frequently when a cross-reference is inserted and
then content is added to the document directly before the "target" of the
cross-reference by placing the cursor directly in front of the "target" and
pressing the Enter key (or typing or inserting some other content). For
example:

"You have a heading in your document that says "My Heading" and is formatted
using a Heading style. You insert a cross-reference to this heading. Word
automatically inserts a hidden bookmark to this heading for use by the
cross-reference. Subsequently, you decide to add some content before this
line by putting your cursor before the text "My Heading" and pressing Enter.
You then change the style of the newly created line and add the content.
Everything looks fine, including the extant cross-reference, but when you
print the document, the cross-reference is messed up; it now contains the
additional content.

"What's happening is that the newly added content is actually being insert
within the hidden bookmark. This is because the hidden bookmark starts at the
very beginning of the line, and it's not possible to get "in front" of it.
Then when you print your document, you have the option to update fields on
printing selected, and Word automatically updates the content of the
cross-reference with the content from the hidden bookmark. This can real PITA
when you added heaps of content or inserted a page break before the "target"
and suddenly you've got a bit chunk of text or an extra page in your document.

"The way to prevent this from happening is to always insert content *after*
the paragraph preceding a cross-reference "target". So in the example above,
instead of putting your cursor directly before the text "My Heading", put it
at the end of the line above and then add your content. In addition, I always
try to avoid inserting page breaks before a heading. Instead, I'll set up the
Heading style with "Page break before" or, if I don't want a page break
before every instance of a particular style, manually format a single
instance."

If you think 'TOC/Index' everywhere you see 'cross-reference' in the above,
you should be able to work out what's going on. Basically, if you add content
by placing your cursor before a heading or other item that's used in the TOC
or Index, the new content gets "caught" in the TOC/Index entry. Then when you
update the fields in the document - and TOCs and Indices are just a fancy
kind of field - it stuffs things up.

As for whether this is related to the upgrade from Word 2002 to Word 2003, I
can't say since I don't have a copy of Word 2002 to play with. But this
should solve the problem regardless.
--
Cheers!

Gordon Bentley-Mix
Word MVP

Please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup.

Read the original version of this post in the Office Discussion Groups - no
membership required!
 
A

Alphy

Thanks, Gordon! It was tedious deleting all the page breaks and inserting
page break before all the headings affected. But it worked!!!

Alphy
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Top