4 Replies Latest reply: Apr 14, 2009 8:51 AM by RodneyA RSS

    How do I find an "unresolved or out-of-date" cross reference?

    RodneyA Community Member

      I was trying to print a book in CS4 that uses cross references. Somehow, several of them fell apart in some way, so they no longer point to anything (I haven't moved or done much editing to the target files, so I'm not sure what happened.) When I try to print, I get the message "There are unresolved or out-of-date cross references in the document "Opinion.indd"."

       

      Now, the problem is that when I open "Opinion.indd," the cross reference pane is completely empty, so I can't select and update the cross references. As far as the cross-reference pane is concerned, there are no cross references. But the printing algorithm knows they're there, and gives me a warning. When I looked for one of the cross references (I happened to know where it was) it had vanished, since it's just a page number, and being unresolved, it's empty. So, for the other cross-references I can't find them because I can't see them, and there's no way I know of to search for them using Find.

       

      Any ideas? Export to tagged text and look for some kind of code? Surely there's a better solution?

       

      Thanks for any help...

        • 1. Re: How do I find an "unresolved or out-of-date" cross reference?
          sandeecohen CommunityMVP

          It's a fascinating puzzle, one I've never run across. (Of course x-refs are relatively new so who knows what problems they have.)

           

          The only thing I can think is to export the file as an .inx (InDesign Interchange Format) and then reopen.

           

          That might get rid of the errant x-ref in the print algorithm.

          • 2. Re: How do I find an "unresolved or out-of-date" cross reference?
            Marvin Sable Community Member

            In the hyperlinks panel (fly out menu) is Update hperlinks and or update cross reference grayed out?

            • 3. Re: How do I find an "unresolved or out-of-date" cross reference?
              RodneyA Community Member

               

              In the hyperlinks panel (fly out menu) is Update hperlinks and or update cross reference grayed out?

              Yes. It's as though there are no cross references. But I get the error when I try to print. I realized that it's possible that there ARE no cross references, I certainly can't find where they'd be, but I didn't write the material. And I did have the earlier error where the cross-references fell apart and didn't refer to anything.
              Anyway, I tried exporting as inx, then opening it, and I get the same message (except that the file name is "Untitled"). I also tried deleting the paragraphs one by one in a test file, and it came down to a paragraph that doesn't seem to have any special characters or cross-references in it. I exported as tagged-text, and there's nothing particularly odd that I can see in that paragraph.
              Anyway, I finally reimported the tagged text file (which lost all inline graphics, this file has a lot of equations), and it behaved properly. So, I copied the mystery paragraph out of the tagged-text round-tripped file, and placed it in the non-exported file, and it seems fine.
              Hmmm.

               

              • 4. Re: How do I find an "unresolved or out-of-date" cross reference?
                RodneyA Community Member

                Well, another data point -- I have been trying out a script that's supposed to turn all URLs and email addresses to hyperlinks, which I need to do for publishing PDF files (Acrobat can't properly make links to URLs that break across lines, at least in two-column text). I just noticed that this script also deletes all cross references, so I expect it starts out by deleting all links before recreating them, and that could be the cause of my links breaking. Unfortunately it's a compiled script, so I can't look at it. But perhaps it leaves some tracks that are also messing up the printing. Obviously I need to stop using it!