Can you resort the tagged references in the "New Cross-Reference" box?

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    • #75734
      Patti Moran
      Member

      Skip to the last paragraph if you want to forego all the explanation.

      I have a a large document with hundreds of cross-references. I know how to create a new cross reference properly, but FINDING the reference (destination) I want in the “New Cross-Reference” dialogue box is nigh-on impossible because there are so many, and for some reason they aren’t sorted alphabetically. This is made worse by the fact that most of my destinations are odd combinations of numbers, letters and sometimes symbols.

      Here’s one of my destination texts, for example: (R)-(-)-Phenylephrine hydrochloride

      All of my destinations or correctly formatted with the same paragraph style sheet.

      When I click create new cross-reference, I select the correct paragraph style in the pane on the left. That automatically populates the right-hand pane with ALL of the possible destinations in the document (there are hundreds of them).

      Then, of course, I have to search through that entire lengthy list to find the exact destination I want…and with destination text such as the example above, many being almost identical except for one or two letters, that is extremely difficult and time-consuming.

      I did a test with a very short, simple document and found that the destinations in that were out of order also, even though all of the destinations read the same except for the final letter. In a sane world, my destination list should have them in alphabetical order. But no! As near as I can tell, the list is sorted by when each destination text was edited… so my list is in this order:
      Reference page 5
      Reference page 4
      Reference page 10
      Reference page 9
      Reference page 8… etc. down to reference page 1

      SO…finally… can I force the New Cross-Reference dialogue box to alphabetize the destination list??

    • #75735
      David Blatner
      Keymaster

      I don’t know the answer to this, but if ID can’t do it, you might take a look at X-refs pro (dtptools.com) which has many more features for doing powerful cross-references. They have a new “cloud” option which makes using their plug-ins very inexpensive!

    • #75736
      Patti Moran
      Member

      Thanks David. I checked that site and it says that Cross-References plug-in is part of the DTP Tools Cloud bundle. That’s the version of InDesign I have (I should have said before).

      One slight advancement I’ve made: it seems that there may be a rhyme and reason to the sorting of destinations after all… they’re in the order they appear in the document. Makes sense, I guess. I’m still not 100% sure if that’s correct, but it seems to be working.

      Problem still is that it’s hard to find a specific destination in the list, as it’s not alphabetical…it’s “positional” which doesn’t really help a lot.

      I trudge on…

    • #75761
      Patti Moran
      Member

      I have called Adobe Customer Care and they told me there is no way to do what I’m doing within InDesign without paying for someone to program a script for me.

      I have sent a feature request to Adobe. Hopefully they’ll agree it’s a good idea. It’s just so awkward the way it works right now. I love InDesign, but this is the first time I’ve encountered a feature that I hate.

      Thanks for your input, David!

      Patti

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