Cross Referencing - Missing out the first part of a paragraph

[nataliec4015172]

If anybody has any knowledge of this I'd really appreciate it.

I've just finished a document on InDesign and now I'm cross referencing things from my contents page (I did it myself because I wanted paragraphs and not pages) but I'm having a nightmare cross referencing to paragraphs as all of my paragraphs are numbered references. (Pictures to show how it's laid out.)

So when I try to cross reference I end up with the full paragraph which is 1          Membership categories.

All I want on there is the actual title - Membership categories...Is there something I can type into the definition to be able to get me this? Or another way around it?

I'm tearing my hair out!

Thanks in advance!

[vinny38]

I'm really not sure I understand your problem, but isn't <paraText /> tag what you're looking for?

[nataliec4015172]

Sorry,

I worded it really badly.

When I put in ,paraText/> I'm still getting the number before the Title coming up (1     Membership Categories)

I'm trying to get it so that I just have the wording (Membership Categories)

Is there a way for me to get the last part of the paragraph? I managed to use the delim to just get the number but I want it the other way and lose the number.

[Obi-wan Kenobi]

Just that:

<paraText />^t<paraNum />

(^/) 

[AnneMarie Concepcion · Accepted solution]

Are you using automatic numbered lists to do the numbers in front of the text? Or did you enter "1." and "1.1" etc. manually.

If you're using automatic numbered lists, then one of the Paragraph Text (<paraText>) types of x-ref formate will do the job. They ignore the numbering and just pick up the text. You can edit your custom Just Name format to replace "fullPara" with "paraText".

AM

[nataliec4015172]

They were copied and pasted in so It was inputted as plain text.

So can I make the numbered lists do 1.1     1.1.1     1.2 etc?

I only didn't do it like that as I didn't think it would.

[Barb Binder]

Yes, you can backtrack and number the heads automatically.

Adobe InDesign: Numbering Chapters, Subheads, Tables & Figures - Rocky Mountain Training

[AnneMarie Concepcion]

Yes, InDesign's automatic numbering is pretty sophisticated like that. You need to set up different levels for the lists, editing the paragraph styles already applied or creating new ones and applying them. So there's a bit of a learning curve, and some reformatting, but it's certainly doable, and what the feature was built for. Certainly if this document will be edited in the future, it's a piece of cake to add a new paragraph to the list and have the rest of them auto increment.

One other thought. If you don't want to go through and convert these to autonumbered lists, due to lack of time or will 😉 you could possibly do a hack. Create a character style that makes text invisible and tiny (smallest type size possible & horizontally scaled to 1%) and in your xref format, apply that to the beginning. You can mix character styles applied to a single x-ref. I show how at the 12:00 mark in this 14 minute video I made on Cross-References a while back:

InDesign Tutorial: Creating a Custom Cross-Reference Format
InDesign tutorial: Creating a custom cross-reference format | lynda.com - YouTube

Hmm one problem with that hack though, it wouldn't affect the tab, if that's what you're using to separate the numbers from the text. ;-(

AM

[AnneMarie Concepcion]

Ah! Use Barb's lesson. Autonumbering is the way to go.

AM

[nataliec4015172]

You are a Lifesaver! Thank you so much!