Is there any logic to the order of files in x-ref box?

[Jim Royal]

A pet peeve of mine: When working with documents with dozens of chapters, making cross-references is always a pain, because the list of files in the cross-reference box follows no logic I can see. Some of the file are in the order in which they were opened, but not all. I'd be ahhpy if the list were alphabetized, or in some consistent order.

Does anyone understand the logic here?

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

I think they just display in the order in which they occur in the document (at least that's what mine seem to be displaying in FM9)

[lsk2002]

Correct as far as I can see. They are in the order the document is in.  The first cross reference in the box for each para tag that has a cross reference is the first used in the document and continues throughout the document in order.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

I use mostly markers for my x-refs. I'd really love to see a wider window and some sorting added to the x-ref box. Oh well, I'd better write it up for the wishlist or nobody will ever do anything about it at Adobe ;>)

[Jim Royal]

It is true that cross-refernces appear in the list of cross-reference in the same order that they exist in the document. This was not my point. What irks me is that file names do not appear in the document list in the same order as they appear in the book file, or in the same order in which they were opened. Thuis is an issue when you make X-refs that span chapters.

I'm looking at my book right now, which contains 45 documents. I opened all the documents in the book with shft->File->Open All Files in Book. This opens the files in the same order in which they ocurr in the book file, yet the list of files in the Cross Reference box is in a different order.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

I see that when I open up a number of different files they appear to be ordered in a "last opened" descending list in the drop-down - I agree, that makes it tough to find the correct target file. In my workflow I try to not have very many files open at the same time, unless I'm constantly x-ref-ing with them. I tend to make my x-ref, close the target file & go back to my insertion point. Then if I need the file again, I open it up from my History list. Not very efficient, but shares the files with my co-author in a better way I think.

[Mike Wickham]

Consider putting in a feature request at:

http://www.adobe.com/support/feature.html

[Russ Ward · Accepted solution]

Hi Jim,

Internally, FM keeps a list of open document handles and it apparently follows no particular order. Sometimes it generally follows the order in which you opened them, but no guarantee. Pretty much anywhere there is a list of files in the GUI, it will be in this unpredictable order as the app retrieves its internal list. As an FDK developer, I bump into this all the time as I retrieve the list of open documents for my dialog boxes. I like your idea of alphabetizing and I think I'll begin to implement that where applicable. As Mike suggests, though, you might have to beg Adobe for a long time to do it on their end .

Russ

[Jim Royal]

Thanks very much for the info, Russ. I was hoping that there might be some underlying pattern, but it seems not. Much appreciated.