Cross-reference to chapter in book

I have an eighteen-chapter book, where all the figure numbers, table numbers, and the first- and second-level numbered headings are prefixed with the chapter number.  It would be a nightmare if (as is possible) the chapters were to be reordered later in the day.  So I put each chapter in a separate ID document, put all the documents in a book, and made liberal use of the 'Chapter number' text variable.
My question is: what do I do with cross-references like 'See Chapter 9'?  How can I treat these so that they will automagically update if Chapter 9 gets moved to become Chapter 13?  As far as I can tell, using the cross-referencing feature doesn't work with text variables, so I can't just point it at the chapter number at the beginning of the relevant chapter (which is, once again, the 'Chapter number' text variable).
Any ideas?
Also, slightly irrelevantly, I notice that InDesign is prone to crashing if I try and cut text containing a text variable.  Is there a known bug?

I have an eighteen-chapter book, where all the figure numbers, table numbers, and the first- and second-level numbered headings are prefixed with the chapter number.  It would be a nightmare if (as is possible) the chapters were to be reordered later in the day.  So I put each chapter in a separate ID document, put all the documents in a book, and made liberal use of the 'Chapter number' text variable.
My question is: what do I do with cross-references like 'See Chapter 9'?  How can I treat these so that they will automagically update if Chapter 9 gets moved to become Chapter 13?  As far as I can tell, using the cross-referencing feature doesn't work with text variables, so I can't just point it at the chapter number at the beginning of the relevant chapter (which is, once again, the 'Chapter number' text variable).
Any ideas?
Also, slightly irrelevantly, I notice that InDesign is prone to crashing if I try and cut text containing a text variable.  Is there a known bug?

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    Thank you in advance for any ideas.
    Tim

    I believe that might work if you used the master document method. That said I strongly recommend that you research Word's master document method as everything I have read indicates the Word gurus suggest it has problems.
    Why would you want all these links working? If that is needed, shouldn't the user be accessing the online help?
    See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips
    Follow me @petergrainge

  • Display cross-references' linked documents filename in the xref panel

    Our company creates technical manuals consisting of five chapters, all named the same, except with a different prefix. For example the "ABC Widget" manual has an introduction chapter named "ABC 1 - Introduction", a safety chapter named "ABC 2 - Safety", etc. Many times I re-use documents for creating subsequent manuals using the "Save As" command. So the "ABC 1 - Introduction" chapter would be saved as "EFG 1 - Introduction" for the "EFG Widget" book. For all the internal xrefs it saves a whole lot of time since all of the xrefs are preserved. But for cross-document references it creates a problem. For example, if the "ABC 1 - Introduction" chapter has a xref to "ABC 2 - Safety", when I save the Introduction chapter as "EFG 1 - Introduction" it will still retain the xref to "ABC 2 - Safety".
    Right now, the only way to see if there are xrefs pointing to latent docs, is to check each one manually. If the xref panel displayed a column indicating the filename of the linked documents, I would be able to tell at a glance if that xref was pointing to the wrong document.
    Thank you.
    ID CS5, MAC

    Hi Van,
    I fear, I expressed myself not very clear. I try again.
    We have DITA structured documents. However, lastest status often was saved in the FM document. The xml documents often are not representing the final status.
    When I open the FM8 document in FM9 everything looks pretty good.
    But: When I want to save the document as xml with FM9, I'm getting errors regarding the cross references.
    The cross references which were created in FM8 - doesn't matter, if a valid xml document or a FM document - always look the same.
    (BTW: I don't think that in structured documents cross references always refer to elemts with a unique ID.)
    example from xml which was created with FM8:
    <xref href = "#id08B4A0R30E9" type = "fm:Chapter">"..."</xref>
    the only difference in the FM document is that the element is called fm-xref there, as it's not an external url.
    in FM9 those cross references are totally different.
    example from xml which was created in FM9:
    <xref href = "#id08B4A0R30E9" class = "- topic/xref">"..."</xref>
    When saving the FM documents with the cross references from the first example as xml in FM9 (we don't have FM8 anymore), I get an error that the attribute type is not defined.
    When having a xml document that was last changed with FM8 and opening/ saving this with FM9, there is no error.
    At the moment I do not know how to solve this issue.
    And also I'm not sure weather the same problem might accour again with change from FM9 to FM10 or else.
    It is a great effort to make new cross references just because we upgraded from FM8 to FM9. (And of course always at most inconvienent time.)
    As we are thinking of upgrading to FM10, it would be good to know before, if there are any similar issues to expect.
    Or if there is an fix for FM9 or FM10 to avoid this at all.
    Regards,
    Anna

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