Cut and Paste Cross References

Question

As some of you know, I'm updating a book composed of chapter files, with cross references between chapters. This used to be incredibly buggy, with crashes and broken references common. Some of that is improved in CS5.5, but a couple of big issues remain, and I'm wondering if anybody has any suggestions.
Two problems:
You generally can't cut and paste a cross reference. I have text that says "see page 27". I want to move this somewhere else in the same document. Cut it. Paste it. The paste comes in looking like this: "see <?>" -- and you get a broken link in the Hyperlinks panel. That really limits text editing. It doesn't always happen. Sometimes you'll paste and your cross reference works. But that's rare. And you can never copy and paste. That always breaks.
Cross references refer to absolute file pathnames. I'd like to rename some chapter files. But I dare not because I assume that all cross references to destinations in those files will break.
Anybody have any suggestions for either of these things? Number 1 is a real work-stopper right now.
Many thanks,
Steve

Answer 1

Okay, guys -- I've made some progress. And I really appreciate your support, now, and in the past.
Upgrading from 7.5.2 to 7.5.3 -- no improvement,
Save a new copy of the file via Save As -- no improvement,
Export as IDML and then just double-click the IDML to open it -- worked! (Is that the correct procedure? Anything else I need to do?)
It's still just about suicidal to try and edit text in any story containing multiple cross references to chapter files that aren't open. And adding a new cross reference is super-slow, during which time you're sure you're going to crash. But with the imported file, the new cross ref held.
One other point of confusion: new cross references display differently than ones created in older versions of the software. The old ones have dark grey boxes around them. New ones have light blue boxes. No mention of this in the help file that I could find. Even if you update an old cross ref, the dark grey remains. Only starting from scratch produces light blue.
Something corrupted that file, which IDML got rid of. It was corrupted by doing little more than adding or updating a bunch of cross references, and doing some minor text editing. No images in the file, so that had nothing to do with it.
Chapter file sizes, since you asked, are anywhere from 3 to 40 mb. The file I was having problems with is only 2.5 mb. The book contains 22 chapters. Long ago I converted it from one big file to separate chapters. Easier to manage, chapter numbering works more logically and chapter starts are easier to handle. But cross references worked a lot better with the single file.
In any event, problem solved for the moment, so thanks very much again. But Adobe really needs to look at this. It's been broken for way too long.
Steve