Linking to another part of a document

OpenOffice.org 2.x Writer Guide

Chapter 3: Working with Text

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• Selecting text
• Cutting, copying, and pasting text
• Moving paragraphs quickly
• Finding and replacing text and formatting
• Inserting special characters
• Formatting paragraphs
• Formatting characters
• Autoformatting
• Creating numbered or bulleted lists
• Using footnotes and endnotes
• Checking spelling
• Using the thesaurus
• Hyphenating words
• Using AutoCorrect
• Using word completion
• Using AutoText
• Line numbering
• Undoing and redoing changes
• Tracking changes to a document
• Linking to another part of a document
• Working with hyperlinks
• Tips and tricks

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If you type in references to other parts of the document, those references can easily get out of date if you reorganize the order of topics, add or remove material, or reword a heading, OOo provides three ways to ensure that your references are up to date, by inserting links to other parts of the same document or to a different document.

• Hyperlinks
• Cross-references
• Bookmarks

The first two methods have the same result if you Control+click the link when the document is open in OOo: you are taken directly to the cross-referenced item. However, they also have two major differences:

• The text in a hyperlink does not automatically update if you change the text of the linked item (although you can change it manually), but changed text does automatically update in a cross-reference.
• When using a hyperlink, you do not have a choice of the content of the link (for example text or page number), but when using a cross-reference, you do have several choices, including bookmarks.

Using hyperlinks

To insert a hyperlink into your document, use the Navigator:

1. Open the documents containing the items you want to cross-reference.
2. Open the Navigator (by clicking its icon, choosing Edit > Navigator, or pressing F5.
3. Click the arrow next to the Drag Mode icon, and select Insert as Hyperlink.
4. In the list at the bottom of the Navigator, select the document containing the item that you want to cross-reference.
5. In the Navigator list, select the item that you want to insert as a hyperlink.
6. Drag the item to where you want to insert the hyperlink in the document. The name of the item is inserted in the document as an active hyperlink.

For more about hyperlinks, see Working with hyperlinks.

Using cross-references

To ensure that references update if you reword a heading, caption, or other linked item, use automatic cross-references. See "Using automatic cross-references" in Chapter 14 (Working with Fields) for details.

Using bookmarks

Bookmarks are listed in the Navigator and can be accessed directly from there with a single mouse click. In HTML documents, bookmarks are converted to anchors that you can jump to by hyperlink. For more about bookmarks, see "Using bookmarks" in Chapter 14 (Working with Fields).