Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007 and 2010. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Maintaining Fields in a Merged Document.

Maintaining Fields in a Merged Document

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated January 24, 2022)
This tip applies to Word 2007 and 2010

Jacqueline asked if it is possible to maintain cross-reference fields in a merged Word document. It seems that when the merge is done, the cross-references are converted to plain text.

Word is actually designed to behave this way, and for good reason. Consider your source document for just a moment. If you have a cross-reference to a paragraph, that is fine. Now, suppose you merge this source document with ten data records. Now, instead of one referenced paragraph you have ten copies of the same paragraph—all in the same document. To which of the ten paragraphs should the cross-reference exist? Now imagine the cross-reference confusion if you merge with fifty or a hundred data records. Since Word has no way of knowing how the cross-reference should be maintained, it converts the cross-reference to plain text.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (11491) applies to Microsoft Word 2007 and 2010. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Maintaining Fields in a Merged Document.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Numbering Endnotes and Adding Chapter Headings

In a document that utilizes endnotes, you need to be concerned with the positioning and how the notes are actually ...

Discover More

Using Call to Run VBA Macros

An elegant way to run macros from within macros is to use the Call statement. In order to use it, you need to provide a ...

Discover More

Adding Up Tops and Bottoms

When you are working with sequenced values in a list, you’ll often want to take some action based on the top X or ...

Discover More

Do More in Less Time! An easy-to-understand guide to the more advanced features available in the Microsoft 365 version of Word. Enhance the quality of your documents and boost productivity in any field with this in-depth resource. Complete your Word-related tasks more efficiently as you unlock lesser-known tools and learn to quickly access the features you need. Check out Microsoft 365 Word For Professionals For Dummies today!

More WordTips (ribbon)

Word Count for a Portion of a Document

Word doesn't provide a field that allows you to return a word count for a portion of your document, but you can create ...

Discover More

Stopping DATE Fields from Updating when Opening a Document

A normal DATE field shows the current date, so it is constantly changing. This can cause problems in a document where you ...

Discover More

Using the SYMBOL Field

The most common way of adding symbols to a document is to use the Symbol dialog box. There is another way, however, that ...

Discover More

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

Notify me about new comments ONLY FOR THIS TIP

Notify me about new comments ANYWHERE ON THIS SITE

Hide my email address

What is seven less than 7?

2019-07-05 02:55:42

Marek Margetín

Hi Allen,
we understand the reason why Word works, but that doesn't mean that Jacqueline's problem, which I had too, should be unsuccessfully closed. I wonder where I'm making a mistake, but I see a simple solution that no MVP has written yet. Please correct me.

If the whole "problem" with cross-referencies in mail-merge is that a NEW merged document loses bookmarks / cross-reference links from the original document, then .. => simply edit only OLD document. With this idea I started to look for and in a few minutes I found that Field.Unlink is quite useful to replace MailMerge.Execute. The best part is that we can select which field should be unlinked/processed (mergefield) and which should be not (cross-referencies). Just need to prepare for correct output with turning on .ViewMailMergeFieldCodes (Preview Results).

Please do you see any serious mistake in that?

I'm a lawyer, not a programmer, so I don't dare to post here my lay VBA code, but it works like charm for me. If you agree, please type a short profi code for Jacqueline and other users. Thank you.

2013-10-21 19:57:21

jay

yes, so there is no tip?

2012-06-25 09:18:03

Dag Ole

So, the tip is; "You can't"? I wonder because I would like the NUMPAGES field to be evaluated in the merged document and not in the template and don't find a way to accomplish this.

This Site

Got a version of Word that uses the ribbon interface (Word 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Word, visit our WordTips site focusing on the menu interface.