Best Practice: update all X-Refs to new copy of book

[Nedlaw]

Hi. Using ID 20.3.1 under the revered Windows 11.

I'm surprised I have not run into this before... but there is always a first time.

Each year, I revise a set of manuals composed as books (that is, I use a book file). Mostly these files stay the same; sometimes there is new material to be placed or text revisions. But mostly they stay the same.

This year, I copied all the book files from 2024-manual-file<1-7>, put them into a new folder, and renamed each of them 2025-manual-file<1-7>. Thus, they correspond. I renamed the old art folder in the old location after copying it and, lo!  all the art references in the 2025 files looked to the NEW 2025 art file for their old familiar screen shots from yesteryear. Great.

But the cross references in each of the transplanted book files STILL POINT TO THEIR OLD REFERENCES in the 2024 files. That is, "Title x" in 2025-manual-file-1 actually points to "Title x" in 2024-manual-file-1. These X-refs are "perfectly good." They point to legitimate locations... but in the old book. They are green in the panel because they exist.

There are a LOT of cross-references.

I tried the method show in this post (https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/how-to-update-cross-references-when-duplicating-...) which recommends renaming the book files in the 2024 book so that ID attempts to relink automatically via relative position. This is exactly what worked with the graphics. Sadly, it did not work with the cross-refs, and oh, several hundred cross references continue to point to their old files -- only now I have red question marks because the names of their target files have been altered.

I certainly can march through these x-refs one-by-one and correct them to point to the same file in the new manual. But is there a better way? Remember, the 2025 files are virtually identical to the 2024 files, at least now at the start of the revision process. Same titles, paragraph styles, captions, etc.

Thanks as always to the community.

-j

[Barb Binder]

Hi @Nedlaw:

The thread you linked to pointed to a bug report: https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/creating-text-text-frames.html. Please take a moment to log in and vote for it. Packaging should be the answer, but it isn't. 

I found a second thread that is equally confusing: fellow Community Expert @Laubender indicated the x-refs need to be updated one at a time (he's very accurate in his answers so I trust him) but then someone else at the bottom said that making the original book unavailable (as per your link) switched the x-refs to relative links. Because it was marked as correct on two different threads I tried it and couldn't make it work. I think Uwe is correct.

Scripting extends InDesign's feature set but that's not my area of expertise so I have no idea if that would be helpful here, or not.

~Barb

[Nedlaw]

Thanks Barb. I went through the process of updating one-by-one. I'll note that when doing it that way, ID sometimes (not always) silently opens the old target file. If you're careful, this is not an issue. But if you're not careful -- and especially if the old and new files are named similarly, as in my case -- it's easy to find the target x-ref and click Okay. Only if the old target file is NOT open will the x-ref reconnection require you to specify the file, the style, and the location text.

I'll note that in the process I detail in the OP, I renamed the component files of the old book. I'm wondering what would have happened if I had renamed the folder of the old book (and left the file names the same) -- the way I did with the graphics folder. That may be the difference between the people who say it works and the people who say it doesn't. Fortunately (or unfortunately) I have several more manuals to update on which I can try this technique!

After I posted, I recalled that this "x-ref to old file" problem happened to me five or so years ago on another project, and I had to correct one-by-one there, too. Thus, the issue has been present for a long time. 

I will review the bug and upvote, as you suggest.

Thanks as always.

-j