Cross references are broken between InDesign and InCopy

[BastienneW]

Newbie to InCopy here....

I have a document with dozens of cross references within it and I need to work on it with a colleague online.

I create an assignment and add a story to it and put these (the icma and icml files) on Dropbox for my colleague to work in.

As soon as he opens the InCopy icma file SOME cross references break (not all!), SOME are indicated as in overflowing text and SOME stay in tact.

When he changes something in the InCopy story (not the cross reference text) and I update the InDesign file, SOME of my cross references are lost, but not all within the same story!

What's happening here?

Most of all: how should we work together on a document with cross references?

Thanks in advance,

Bastienne

[BobLevine]

There is zero reason for an assignment here. Just export the entire document to InCopy and let the InCopy user open the INDD document.

[BastienneW]

Thanks Bob, I thought of using the indd file as well and tried it, but it doesn't seem to help so far. Cross references get lost when different users open the file. 

Or do you mean package it? I didn't do that, just put the indd as is on Dropbox and opened the text which needed to be edited. 

[BastienneW]

In addition: what does help so far is:

1. to put the indd and icma and icml files all in the same Dropbox

2. to only open InCopy access to the main text in which the cross references are placed. All the text boxes to which they refer remain closed (these are figure captions, which is a pain because the editor does need to add some captions for me...). Once I open them and they are edited in InCopy, the cross reference is lost. 

Anyone has a better idea for working on this document, I'd be very happy!

thanks, Bastienne