MS Word plugin, How do I change a reference?

shekn

Is there any simple way to change one reference into another without finding and changing all in-text citations?

For example, for BOOK_A I have 100 in-text citations, then I decide that BOOK_B would be more appropriate. What should I do?
1) find and change all in-text citations (seems to be the better choice)
2) edit the whole bibliography (i can only add BOOK_B to the end of list)
3) edit the BOOK_A info (but it may be linked to another documents)
4) edit the list of references each time it is updated
5) a simpler way?

Thanks.

ajlyon

This is a very interesting situation. It shouldn't happen often, and it will usually require other changes anyway (locator changes for different pagination)-- but I suppose I can see where this would come up.

The easiest is (3), but you correctly note that it could cause trouble for other documents.

The most correct is (1)-- it might be possible to do this by exposing the field codes and doing a find-and-replace to replace the fields for BOOK_A with those for BOOK_B. But this runs the risk of breaking the document, and you would definitely want to make backups first.

shekn

Thanks, I didn't consider the possibility of automatically replacing the field codes.

Originally I planned to use pdf's and "dummy" articles in bibliography (for example, "any book about thermal analysis") in working drafts, but their further replacement seems to be too complicated. So now I keep on using "[?]" marks with MS Word annotations for this purpose.