Creating Cross-References to Images in Adobe InDesign

If you're using a database publishing solution to produce publications such as directories, classified ads, or "Yellow Pages" with Adobe InDesign, you might want to create cross references to images in the document. It's easy to create cross references to text, but there's no way to crete them for images.

What are Cross References?

Cross references are links between text in a document - for example: "See Page 24" - and the "target", or referenced, text or graphic. You can enter the cross-ref text - just as plain text - but then what happens if you add or delete some pages, or move the target text to another place? The page reference will be wrong!

How to Create Cross-References

In InDesign (version CS4 or later) it's quite easy to create cross-references to text via the Hyperlinks palette:

Position the cursor at the place where you want the cross-ref text to go:
In the Hyperlinks panel, choose Insert Cross-Reference ... from the flyout menu:
In the New Cross-Reference dialogue, first select the paragraph style in which your "target" text is set (semidisplay, in our example) and then select the target text paragraph from the list that appears in the right-hand panel Choose the Cross-Reference format (Full Paragraph & Page Number in our example) Choose the Appearance of the cross-ref text (eg Invisible Rectangle) Click OK
The cross-ref text now shows the target text and its page number:

But this only enables you to link to text. You can't link a cross-reference to an image! That's what our Create Cross-References script does.

Demonstration Movie

This short movie demonstrates how the script works: