Version 17 includes several improvements to Lawmaker’s referencing tools which extend the x-ref functionality already present in the application. These enhancements should help to improve the quality of references created in Bills and SIs, while also making it easier for Lawmaker users to manage and update the references in their document.
Scope of the changes
Automatic tagging of references
The majority of these improvements consist of changes to the automated Tag references feature. In version 17, clicking the “tag references” button in the toolbar 
will add x-ref tags to both internal and external references in the selected text.
In previous versions of Lawmaker, the automatic tagging operation only recognised internal references; that is, cross-references between provisions within the current document. Where references to other documents existed in the text - for example, in a section of a bill which makes amendments to another Act - the automatic tagging feature previously identified many of these as internal references and tagged them erroneously. This is now fixed, and the automatic tagging operation should now distinguish between internal and external references and tag them accordingly.
The most significant part of this is that in addition to distinguishing between internal and external references, the the automatic tagging operation also searches for information about any external references it finds, and adds that information to the bill. External references to existing law are identified based on the title and year present in the text, and reference tags containing links to the relevant page on legislation.gov.uk are added to the document.
These external references now show in blue in the Editor.
Functionality relating to internal references (i.e. references within the document) is unchanged, except for their presentation. They now show in purple in the Editor.