Running and referencing number in MS Word

Writing technical papers in MS Word is a painful process for me, especially citing previous papers in numeric format. Fortunately, I have just found that MS Word provides scripting capability and field support to make things easier. To insert a field, simply press CTRL+F9. Each field is quoted by a pair of bracket ({ and }).

For example, equation numbering is defined by a list namely eq. The number itself can be defined by { SEQ eq }. It is enough for displaying but not suitable for referencing. The better solution is to define it as a name using SET field. However, SET field does not display anything so you need to add REF field to refer it explicitly.

Definition

{ SET abc_eq { SEQ eq } }{ REF abc_eq }


Reference
{ REF abc_eq }

Summary shortcut





ALT+F9
toggles the visibility of field code source
CTRL+F9
inserts new field
CTRL+A
selects all items in document
F9
updates all fields when all items are selected using CTRL+F9