Re: Using custom text in a referenced page number

Hi Whatever Your Name Is...

You're right: It's not possible :-) Now, here's one way you can fudge it:
use a fake chapter number.

You need to assign a number to the chapter that will not occur as a "real"
chapter number. You can then use global Find/Replace to replace it with
your own string laster as part of your finishing process before printing.

I am sure you are already aware that this kind of page numbering makes for a
book that is extremely difficult to use? You must have some other important
business reason for choosing to design your document this way. However, for
those newer users who do not know why this is a method we normally avoid, I
will include the following:

Folio-by-chapter means the users have to "know" where each chapter starts
and ends in the book before they can work out how far down the page number
is likely to be. Unless you include coloured dividers at the beginning of
each chapter, it's very difficult for them to know that.

"How many thumb-fuls from the front is page "MFND-27"?" So looking anything
up in such a book becomes a chore, and thus, users *don't*. Which sorta
defeats the purpose a bit :-) And the extra cost of adding the dividers,
and then implementing a system to track people to enssure page replacement
is really happening, far exceeds the cost of printing a new manual each time
you update.

Companies often specify this kind of page numbering because they believe it
will be cheaper to maintain the document by "page replacement". The people
who make such decisions have never been taken on a tour of the operational
areas of the company, where they will find the sad little piles of
"replacement pages" languishing folornly for years beneath the bookshelf
waiting for "someone" with sufficient "time" to insert them in the books.
The actual "information" being used day-to-day is years out of date!

Sometimes, it is because they have not Googled for the Victorian Esso Gas
Disaster http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Esso_Longford_gas_explosion, and
learned just how expensive the legal settlements can get after their
oil-refinery blows up -- the operator struggling to respond to an emergency
was working with manuals that were years out of date because the replacement
pages never DID get inserted. Until after he lost control of the plant,
turning a routine "incident" into a catastrophe that cost lives and nearly
took out an entire suburb :-)

(It's really interesting how the legal mind works: nowhere in that report is
it mentioned that while the tank rupture was always going to happen, the
situation could have been recovered quite quickly had the operator's manual
not been out of date!!)

Cheers

--

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs

+61 4 1209 1410, <mailto:john@xxxxxxxxxxx> mailto:john@xxxxxxxxxxx


"automandc" <automandc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:21ECC383-0281-4384-81B8-B54F08CCB5B0@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Here is what I am trying to do (Word 2003):

I have two discrete parts of my document (could even be separate
documents)
with multiple sections in each part.

I want to refer to the first part by a custom label, e.g. "MFND", and I
want
that to be part of the page number so that, not only does "MFND-1, MFND-2"
appear at the bottom of each page, but in a TOC and TOA later in the
document
(i.e., later section), page references identify "MFND-x" for the specific
location of the referenced item in Part 1, and regular page numbers for
items
in Part 2.

This may not be possible, but if anyone can figure it out, I am betting it
is the denizens of this group.

TIA


.

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