Hi,


I am wondering if there is an option in Word to do something like this:
I have document where in one place I wrote some steps to do (punctuation). In each step there is some number or word/sentence.

And in some steps this numbers or words should be the same. If I change word in first occurence it should change in other places.

Is there any way to do this? Now I do this by putting Cross-reference (Insert -> Links -> Cross-reference) in every next step like this "as the same as in the point 1.1". But in big documents it is hard to go back to i.e. point 1.1 and check the value.

First thing on a bitterly cold morning, what leaps into my head is TrailBlazer. Better ideas will prevail.


I wrote this 25 years ago when web pages began arriving. I would see a word or phrase in a web page, not know what it was, and debate whether to look it up (which I should do if it appeared throughout the page) or just ignore it (if it appeared just this once).


In your case suppose that you have a phrase [[[some steps to do (punctuation)]]] and it is part of a larger chunk of text that is spread across 300 pages of your "completed" document.


You learn that you need to make a change in all occurrences of the phrases that contain the phrase some steps to do (punctuation).

Edit/Find or Edit/replace would do the trick.


But if you select the phrase some steps to do (punctuation) and set Trailblazer to work, every instance of some steps to do (punctuation) will be linked in a circular hyperlink trail. You can visit each occurrence of the phrase to see what the effect will be, in the context of proposed changes at each occurrence before you go ahead and start making changes.


If you are interested in an fully automatic propagation of change, then you will need the Edit/Find and also some Edit/Replace code (which is used in TrailBlazer) and probably some auxiliary code. It would be nice to be able to undo some or all of your changes if they "went wrong".


Cheers, Chris

Do you mean you are bookmarking the first item and using cross-reference for the repeated instances? That is certainly one way to do it. It sounds like you are only using cross-reference and manually selecting. Try highlighting the first instance and making it a bookmark (call it Subject1 or whatever makes sense.) Then when you're doing the cross-reference, it's pretty easy to call up.

In the attached image, I took some random Office text, selected a noun, bookmarked it, and am able to repeatedly insert the cross-reference wherever I please, even if it makes the sentence not make sense.

You can also use Fields, which may make sense if you have a document like, for example, an apartment rental contract, where the lessee's name might be repeated over and over again, and you have a template where you only want to change that entry once and it populates all over.

Attached Images

bookmark-crossref.jpg (120.3 KB, 9 views)

There are numerous ways. See:

• Repeating Data Using Document Property Content Controls and Other Mapped Content Controls
• Insert Cross-References
• Repeating Data (Populating Multiple Like Fields) by Greg Maxey
• StyleRef Field