1) Is it possible to cross-reference a caption without inhereting the case of the letters? For example, if I have a caption that says "Figure 2: blah blah blah", and I want to cross-reference this in the middle of a sentence, I don't need the capital F. I would like to say something like "This is shown in figure 2."

2) Is it possible to cross-reference only the number of the caption? For example, if I have two captions: "Figure 1..." and "Figure 2..." and I want to say "This is shown in figures 1 and 2", I don't need the "figure" for '2' in there. (There's also the issue of pluralizing "figures" in this case, but I'll let that slide for now).

1. Press Alt+F9 to show field codes. Add the \* lower switch to each REF (cross-reference) field. Press F9 to update. Press Alt+F9 again to hide field codes.

2. Instead of creating a cross-reference directly to the caption (in the Cross-reference dialog box), you can manually add a bookmark around the caption number, and then create a cross-reference to the text of that bookmark.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

Here's what I get when I hit ALT+F9 on "figure 1":

{ REF _Ref301179496 \* MERGEFORMAT }

There seems to be a \* already there. Am I to add another one? Should this be modified in any way?

Excellent! That seems to be working.

Just one thing though: how come it ignores the font style? The reference appears in times new roman when both the paragraph the reference is in and the caption referred to are in verdana?

Yes, you can have multiple \* switches in the same field.

And to ensure that the cross-reference uses the formatting applied to it, you can replace the \* MERGEFORMAT switch with the \ * CHARFORMAT switch. (Strictly speaking, \* CHARFORMAT applies to the field result the formatting applied to the first character of the field code.)

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional