Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

Today I encountered a bug I have never seen before in LO. I am using six different documents for an essay, due to some unwanted file corruptions occuring previously. (Again, thank you so much for saving the contents.) I have all my translations at the end of my main body text file, and at the end of day, I copy this to my appendix file. As expected, all the cross-references in the original file are reported as missing, but this is all solved when they are all merged in the master document. However, something unusual happened when pasting the final cross-reference today: Instead of being changed to ‘Error: Could not find source of reference’ (translated from the Norwegian prompt), the final cross-reference (and only the final one) was changed to cross-reference a custom footnote in the new file (pointing to an asterisk).

Here is how the file is laid out:

• H1
  • A series of body text paragraphs, most of which begin with a number 1–n
    • To some of these, footnotes unique to this specific file, using the *, †, ‡, § system, starting anew for each page.

There are no cross-references from the original file pointing to any of these symbol set footnotes. The original file uses numbers; the appendix uses symbols.

I was able to reproduce the error (ɔ: not get it to go away) several times. The error was only present for the final paragraph, and not even reloading the file solved it. But then I by accident added a linebreak at the end of the final paragraph in the original document, and when pasting that the error disappeared, correctly referencing the missing footnote from the original file.

So here is how I did it:

1. I finished writing the cross-referenced translations in the original file.
2. I pasted the new lines into the appendix.
3. The final paragraph changed the final cross-reference to point to an (assumed) random footnote in the new document, despite this being a symbol footnote, not a numerical footnote.
4. After numerous retries at pasting both that single paragraph as well as that final paragraph and some of the paragraphs from above, I added a line-break at the end of the final paragraph in the original document.
5. I pasted the paragraph(s) with the added linebreak after the final line, and the error disappeared
6. I was able to repeat it a few times, but after saving I could not reproduce the error.

Can you upload a sample file showing the issue (a zip of them if there is a master doc)? Keep a couple of pages only.
Do you make whole paragraphs cross-references?

Problem is, after I fixed it, I have been unable to reproduce it. The cross-references were to the numbered footnotes, not to passages of text.

Today I found out how to reproduce it. The error happens when I paste a paragraph into the new file, and the paragraph contains a footnote. Apologies for the large image following, but it demonstrates quite clearly what happens:
I then tried to paste just the text with Ctrl+Shift+V, then pasted the cross-reference. Notice how the dagger is not yet pasted as a footnote.

Every time I simply pasted the dagger, the issue re-occurred.

───

Worth noting is that I, in my main body text, use numbered footnotes, whereas in the appendix, I have opted for the ‘*, †, ‡, §’ system. The appendix thus has cross-references to the numbered footnotes in the main body text, and references within the appendix itself is done with */†/‡/§/**/etc.