How To Make A Cross Reference In Adobe InDesign CC

Hi there, it's time to make a Cross Reference where we 'See more on page 4', and this '4' is automatically generated, so if the content moves this updates automatically. That is a Cross Reference. Let's go learn how to make it.

So first thing we need to do is apply a couple of Paragraph Styles. Why? Because Cross References often use Paragraph Styles to kind of decide where the link goes to. We're going to do that. We're going to cheat by bringing in Paragraph Styles I've already made. So let's go to 'Window', go down to 'Styles', and open up 'Paragraph Styles'. And in here, we're going to go to the 'Flyout' menu. And in here we're going to go to 'Load Paragraph Styles'. I want to go to '05 Long Documents', and let's pull the Paragraph Styles that I've already made in Section 2. Click 'Open'. And I'm going to bring in all of them, and just click 'OK'. You can see, we've got some Styles there. With nothing selected, I'm going to grab 'Normal', and delete it. Normal came through from our Word document, even though I don't want it.

First thing I'm going to do is select everything. So, my crazy five clicks, or you can go 'Command A' on a Mac, or 'Control A' on a PC. Select everything on all the pages, and let's apply the Body Copy. Next thing I want to do is apply a few of the Headings. So here's my first one here, '2019 Collection'. Let's apply 'MF Heading'. Now, the fun game is finding the rest of the Headings that I've-- it's like a little find and seek, and hunter game that I made. I'm sorry for this. So let's go and find the other Headings. There is '4'. So 'Oak', 'Ash'. You're just looking for the line that has one thing by itself. There's one Walnut, and one more somewhere. There he is, 'Beech'. So those are my Headings.

So, what I'd like to do is, back to our page 1, remember, 'Command-J-1'. And let's say, at the end of this first paragraph here, I'm going to zoom in a little bit, and I'm going to say 'See more on page-- actually I'm going to say 'See more on', and let the Cross Reference put the rest in. So, the little space after there, I'm going to open up my 'Cross References' panel. It's under 'Window', down under 'Type & Tables'. It's called 'Cross References'. I'm going to create a new one. And I'm going to link to a Paragraph. What paragraph? It's going to be one of the paragraphs in my MF Heading. And there they are, all listed here, I'm going to link to Oak in this case. And down here, where it says 'Format', you can, 'Full Paragraph & Page number'. We'll just have a little look.

Can you see? It says, ' See more on "Oak" '. That's what it's putting in. It's putting in the Paragraph name, which is Oak on page 3, and it puts it in little quotes. You might like that, but not the quotes, lot of people don't. Click on the pencil, and you can see here, see the quotes either side of 'Full Para', just delete these two. Click 'OK'. So 'See more on Oak on Page 3'. You might just want the page number though, 'See more on Page 3'. Great! Now if I click 'OK', that my friends is a Cross Reference.

What I'm going to do now is, let's move Oak to another page. If I put in a couple of returns here, can you see, I'm using that Paragraph Style over and over again, 'Heading 1'. So it's using this Heading 1, 'Oak', as my page number. So if I go through, and just keep putting returns in to get to the next page, it's going to actually still think it's on page 3, because I'll use this Paragraph Style all the way through. So what I'm going to do is make sure when I put in, say-- I want to break this to the next page. I'm going to put it just in this full stop here, I'm going to say I'm going to say 'Type', 'Break Character'. And I'm going to say 'Page Break'. So it pushes it all the way over to the next page. There he is there. Awesome!

So, he should be on the new page now. Let's go up to-- where is he? You can see, it automatically updated, it's now on page 4. So that will follow that around. And that's the way of using Paragraph Styles to do it. Now another way to do a Cross Reference instead of using a Paragraph Style, which, I guess-- I prefer just putting something in called a Text Anchor. And it's just-- it's a little bit more, I guess simple, you don't have to create Paragraph Styles. So let's go-- on this other paragraph here, we're going to say, "See more on page… actually, I'll get rid of 'page'. So this is going to say, "See more on…

So what we need to do is put in something called a Text Anchor. What it's actually called in the Cross References panel in the flyout here, actually we've got to find a place where it needs to go. We're going to find-- its poor old 'Ash'. Ashes are unfortunately at the bottom of the column. We're going to ignore that for the moment. So with Ash, I got my cursor flashing just here. I'm going to say 'Cross Reference'. I'm going to put in what's called a 'New Hyperlink Destination'. And what kind of Hyperlink Destination? We looked at pages before, we're going to use this one called Text Anchor. I'm going to call this one 'Ash'. Click 'OK'. And what it is, it's invisible, you can't see it. If you go to 'Type', and go to 'Show Hidden Characters', this little Text Anchor in there, he's tiny and hard to see, but it's in there, that little colon. So that's not very helpful, I'll turn those off. But I'll put in my Text Anchor in there.

Now what we can do is, back up on page 1, 'Command-J-1'. And where is my Option? Zooming around, there it is. With my cursor flashing, I can insert another Cross Reference, but instead of trying to get a Paragraph, I'm going to go to a Text Anchor. And I've only got one in this page, 'Ash'. And it's on page 7, happy days. Let's click 'OK'. That is the two ways to create a Cross Reference.

Actually one more thing that can happen with Cross References, that's quite useful. If I export this as a PDF, but make sure it's an Interactive PDF, I'll put mine on my Desktop. I'm going to put in my 'Desktop', go to my 'Advanced Coursework'. And I'll call this 'Cross Reference Example'. Leave everything by default. And what happens automatically is, you'll see here, "See more on page 4." Because it's an Interactive PDF, when I click on it, it jumps to page 4, same with that second one. "See more on page 7", and it jumps to page 7. Here he is, 'Ash', we sure should have fixed that.

All right, so that is Cross Referencing in InDesign. Let's get on to the next video.