Fixing lots of X-refs

[Combs, Richard]

John Sgammato wrote:
 
> I am whiling away a snowy Boston day fixing hundreds of broken x-refs.
> 
> My process: I update the book and get the long, long list of bum
links.
> Then I click on them one at a time, working my way patiently through
the
> list. But my patience is wearing thin, and maybe it doesn't have to...
> 
> When I click the link, the file window appears, with the link
highlighted.
> 
> I double-click the link to repair it, and see the "Cannot find source
> file..." error message.
> 
> I click OK and the Cross-Reference dialog opens.

Whoa! That's painful and unnecessary. Sorry I'm coming into this so
late, and it may be moot if you've finished -- but there's an easier way
to do this, and it doesn't require mucking around in MIF or plugins or
anything. 

Open all the files in the book and in each file containing unresolved
xrefs, do the following:

1) Select Edit > Update References. 

2) In the Update References dialog, click Commands, and select Update
Unresolved Cross-References. 

3) In the Update Unresolved Cross-References dialog, select one of the
files (other than Current) listed in the box at the top. (The names are
the old file names that the xrefs pointed to when they were created.)

4) If the number of unresolved xrefs to the selected file (displayed
below the box) is more than zero, find the new file name for that file
below, select it, and click Open. This fixes all the xrefs to that file.


5) Repeat the preceding two steps until the total number of unresolved
xrefs is zero. Then close the dialog and save the file.  

It's still manual, but at least you're fixing xrefs 6 or 8 at a time
(more or less) instead of individually, and you're only addressing
what's broken -- the file name -- instead of re-identifying the
destination paragraph and re-creating the marker (neither of which is
necessary, since the xref markers are still there undisturbed in the
renamed files). 

HTH, if not now, maybe next time. :-)

Richard 


Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
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rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-777-0436
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