Cannot use InsertCrossReference (results in a Runtime Error 4198)

Question

I'm looping through a collection of strings (looking like "Figure 1"), finding every occurrence of those strings in a Word document, and trying to insert on each of them a cross reference to a caption (my captions follow this pattern "Figure 1 [00:01:20]"). For some reason, it totally fails on the line containing the "InsertCrossReference" method (throws a runtime error 4198 with the message "Command failed"). Here's a part of my code so far:

For Each Match In AllMatches 'for each word in my AllMatches collection
    Set rngFind = ActiveDocument.Content
    With rngFind.Find
        .Forward = True
        .ClearFormatting
        .Text = Match.value
        .Format = False
        .MatchCase = False
        .MatchWholeWord = True
        .Wrap = wdFindStop
        Do While .Execute
            rngFind.InsertCrossReference ReferenceType:="Figure", _
                ReferenceKind:=wdOnlyLabelAndNumber, _
                ReferenceItem:=Match.value, _ 'Match.value looks like "Figure 1 [00:01:20]" (like in the picture below)
                InsertAsHyperlink:=True, _
                IncludePosition:=False, _
                SeparateNumbers:=False, _
                SeparatorString:=" "
        Loop
    End With
Next Match

I tried to investigate and found that "UBound(ActiveDocument.GetCrossReferenceItems(ReferenceType:="Figure"))" returns "0" (same when I use "wdCaptionFigure" as ReferenceType).

When I manually tries to insert the cross-reference, everything works (see the picture below)...

When I record the manual insert and tries to run the code generated by word, it fails!

Could the issue be caused by the fact the captions are inserted with VBA just before, on shapes rather than inlineshapes (with a loop and ".InsertCaption Label:=wdCaptionFigure" etc.)?

---- EDIT ----

Here's are some steps that trigger the error, and seem to confirm that inserting the caption on shapes rather than inlinshapes cause the cross-reference error later on.

Create a blank word document (I'm using Word 2016)
Insert a picture
Change the picture format wrap text option from "in line with text" (=inlineshape) to anything else ("through" for instance)
Right click on the picture and insert a caption (reference type: "Figure", for which caption:"Figure 1")
Change the picture format back to "in line with text"
Insert some text in your document ("I am a test" for instance)
Select "I am a test" and run the following macro:

Sub Macro1() Selection.InsertCrossReference ReferenceType:="Figure", ReferenceKind:=wdEntireCaption, ReferenceItem:="1", InsertAsHyperlink:=True, IncludePosition:=False, SeparateNumbers:=False, SeparatorString:=" " End Sub

This triggers the 4198 error. If you omit the step 3 and the step 5, there's no error. I'm totally stuck on this one. I'll be very glad if one of you could help me.

What's the error message - no one memorizes the numbers, the message would help. Could you please edit the question to include information to reproduce the document the code is running on? Just enough to be able to test (a minimal reproducible example). And a screen shot of some document content could help, as well. You're saying the Find.Execute is working, correct? — Cindy Meister

Tom J Tom J · Accepted Answer · 2019-08-06T16:36:42

I had a similar problem. I solved it by creating an array, saving the range to the array within the .Execute loop, and then looping through the array after find is done to insert the cross reference. Here is an example:

Dim docRange As Range
Set docRange = ActiveDocument.Content
Dim terms() As Range, X As Long
X = 0
With docRange.Find
...
    While .Execute
        docRange.Select
            If .found Then
                ReDim Preserve terms(X)
                Set terms(X) = Selection.Range
                X = X + 1
            End If
        Selection.Collapse
    Wend
End With
Dim i As Integer
For i = 0 To UBound(terms)
    terms(i).InsertCrossReference _
                ReferenceType:=wdRefTypeBookmark, _
                ReferenceKind:=wdContentText, _
                InsertAsHyperlink:=True, _
                ReferenceItem:=mark

Next i

Cannot use InsertCrossReference (results in a Runtime Error 4198)

1 Answers