Error! Reference source not found.

[Sundog]

In Word 2007, I have a document with over a hundred figures, all with Captions. Often, to insert a new figure, I simply copy an existing one with its caption, delete the figure but not the caption, paste the new figure above the caption, and correct the text of the caption as required, without messing with the Figure Number field. This avoids the whole deal of selecting the References tab, then selecting References > Insert Caption, followed by selecting Home, then my custom style FigureCaption. The running text is littered with References > Cross-references to the figures.

When I do a Ctrl+A, F9 to update my Table of Figures and the fields in the document, three of my figure references in the running text change to Error! Reference source not found. (Figures 3, 4, and 38). These captions and references look just like all the others in the document, with the same styles.

For these three figures, I've found that I need to delete the figure caption, use References > Insert Caption to put it back in, then do References > Cross-references to replace the error message in the text. Now Ctrl+A, F9 works as expected.

Any ideas as to what's happening? Needless to say, I now do a search for Error! Reference source not found. before saving my latest draft.

[HansV]

Word creates invisible bookmarks to handle cross references. I suspect that you may have accidentally deleted a few of these bookmarks together with the picture.

[Sundog]

Word creates invisible bookmarks to handle cross references.

Ah ha! I can see the bookmarks that I insert, and I have Word Options > Display > Show all formatting marks checked. Is there a way to make these cross ref bookmarks visible, so I don't cause this problem in future?

[HansV]

No, even if you show bookmarks (Word Options > Advanced > Show Document Content > Show Bookmarks), these will remain invisible.

[Sundog]

Very tricky, those Microsoft coders. Thanks for the info.