Headings and Content - Automation

[centrifugal.me]

Hi Nisus community,

The feature I'm looking for may be out of range of a word processor, but I thought I would throw the question out there and see if it is possible.

I'm creating a series of headings in a document and I'd like to list them organized in a different order on another page. For example, if the master document content is like this:

1. Apples
...content...
2. Lettuce
...content...
3. Carrots
...content...
4. Oranges
...content...

And if I had another page organizing the headings into categories (or topics), like this:

Vegetables:
(1) 2. Lettuce
(2) 3. Carrots
Fruits:
(1) 1. Apples
(2) 4. Oranges

And then I created another heading for cherries in side the master document so it was like this...

1. Apples
...content...
2. Lettuce
...content...
3. Cherries
...content...
4. Carrots
...content...
5. Oranges
...content...

Could I set up a way so that my organizing page would automatically adjust, i.e., the headings' numbers would would change (e.g., Carrots and Oranges increase by one integer below) like this:

Vegetables:
(1) 2. Lettuce
(2) 4. Carrots
Fruits:
(1) 1. Apples
(2) 5. Oranges

(I assume I'd have to add the "Cherries" heading to the organizing page, so I left it out in the example above.)

Ultimately, I'm wondering if there is a way to have a heading summary automatically adjust when it is changed in the master content. Is this possible?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Best,
Joel

[phspaelti]

Yes, what you want is definitely possible. There are a number of ways to do it. One method is as follows:

1. Define a heading style which has a list style as part of its definition. That way your headings will automatically be numbered in sequence. Make sure the list style you use is set to "continue numbering across document content".
2. For the heading summary use "Cross-References…" to insert the information from the document. In the cross-reference window choose "Insert Reference to: List Item", and "Display text: List item number". You will have to repeat this with "Display text: Paragraph text". Alternately you can first bookmark your headings and then insert cross-references to the bookmarks.

Once you set it up like this, adding a further heading will cause all numbers to update, both in the document and the summary

Philip

[centrifugal.me]

Thank you so much!