My first post, and I need help please with cross-referencing in word.

Until recently the process worked fine:
Cross-referencing in multi-level documents with headings. 1, 1.1, 1.1.1 etc. When I want to alert the reader to see another section, I hit insert, cross-reference, and then "numbered item" and added paragraph text. Would get "2.8 Risks and Benefits" or whatever. That entire string was a hypertext. And this is what I wanted.

Now when I do the same insert-cross-reference-numbered text-paragraph text, word inserts "1 Risks and benefits." the actual number is lost. If I just want to insert the number it inserts the correct number.

This issue has moved to all my documents, not only the current document, even old ones that had worked fine.

Any idea what happened or more importantly, how to fix it? Many thanks!