Warnings about references
- Edward Griffiths
The internal reference citation ______ doesn't match the ID of the target provision (______), stored in the href attribute of the reference element). This may mean the citation has not updated correctly or that it has been manually changed. Recreate the reference unless you are sure the current text and attributes are correct.
This advisory warning alerts you to any internal cross-references which may have been changed in a way that will create unexpected results when using the ‘Update x-refs’ function.
Every cross-reference in a document consists of two essential elements: the reference text and the target information. The reference text is the visible text of the reference which appears in the document. The target information is Lawmaker’s underlying record of where that reference should point to; i.e. the location of the provision the cross-reference is referencing. As you add and delete provisions in a document and reorder and renumber existing provisions, the ‘Update x-refs’ action gives you a means of automatically updating the reference text of any internal cross-references which need to be changed as a result of any renumbering you have made to the provisions in the document. This action relies on the target information stored in each cross-reference.
For example, if you have created several cross-references to ‘section 4' throughout your document, and section 4 is subsequently moved elsewhere in the document and renumbered as section 8, you can use the ‘Update x-refs’ function to automatically correct the reference text of your cross-references so that they instead read 'section 8’.
However, this functionality won’t work correctly if the reference text and target information have become out-of-sync for any reason. This can happen if you manually edit the reference text or change the target information. Where this has happened, this document check reminds you to look at the target information (which appears in brackets in the document check message) and compare it with the text of the reference. If they don’t appear to match and you intend to use the ‘Update x-refs’ action, you should remove the reference tags from the cross-reference (by right-clicking on it and selecting ‘remove reference tag’) and then re-create it using either of the following methods:
assuming the text of the reference is correct, simply select the text and click the ‘Tag x-refs’ button in the toolbar. This will re-create the cross-reference tag with the correct underlying information about its target.
if you prefer to manually re-create the reference, right-click on the relevant target provision in the Structure View, hover over ‘select reference to copy’ in the menu, click on the desired reference form, then highlight the old reference text in your document and press Ctrl+V to paste the newly created reference in its place.
The legislative document relating to the external reference _______ could not be located on http://www.legislation.gov.uk . This may be because the document doesn't exist yet or because there is a typo in the name.
This warning alerts you to any external references which Lawmaker was unable to associate with a relevant document on legislation.gov.uk during the automatic Tag x-refs process. The error message will only ever apply to external references.
When using the automatic tagging feature, Lawmaker will parse the text of any references which appear in the text of your document and attempt to add links to relevant provisions of documents published on legislation.gov.uk. For this automatic tagging process to work, the reference text in your document must match exactly the title of the referenced documents as they appear on legislation.gov.uk.
For example, a reference to the “Human Rights Act 1999” will be flagged as an erroneous reference because the year is wrong; likewise a reference to the “Human Rights act 1998” will be flagged as an erroneous reference because the word ‘act’ is not capitalised. A reference to the “Human Rights Act 1998” will be tagged successfully.
You will also see this warning appear on external references which refer to documents which will be published in future but which do not currently exist on leigslation.gov.uk. In those cases, you do not need to take any action. If you would like to remove the document check warning for any of these references, you can right-click on the reference (or double-click on it and use the floating toolbar), and select Ignore reference.
Where the flagged reference is to a document which does exist, and you expect the automatic tagging to correctly add an appropriate link, first check the spelling, capitalisation, and year in the text of the reference, and ensure it matches that of the relevant document on legislation.gov.uk. (Note that the presence, absence, or capitalisation of the word ‘the’ at the start of the reference does not affect the parsing.) If you notice a mismatch between your document reference and the title on legislation.gov.uk and wish to correct it and re-tag, perform the following steps: right-click on the reference (or use the floating toolbar) and select Remove reference, then make your correction to the text of the reference, and finally click the Tag x-refs button 
Reference ________ requires checking as it has been updated.
This warning may appear when re-tagging a document - that is, re-running the automatic Tag x-refs function again on a document which already contains references. The warning will appear if you have made changes to the text of your document in a way which causes the meaning and implicit target of certain references to change. The warning alerts you to references which originally referred to a particular provision of a document, but which now (after re-tagging) refer to a different document, usually because something else has changed nearby which affects the context in which that reference appears.
For example, a provision of a Bill which makes amendments to enacted legislation will often introduce those amendments by stating that “the [Act name] is amended as follows”. The other subsections or paragraphs which follow will contain references to the provisions in that Act without explicitly stating after each reference that they are references to the same Act. Automatically tagging such a provision in Lawmaker will correctly identify that the references in the other subsections/paragraphs are to provisions in the Act mentioned in the introductory text. If you subsequently change the text which introduces the Act so that it instead refers to a different Act, and re-tag the provision, the references in the other subsections will be flagged for checking. The screenshots below show an example of this:
The purpose of this document check is to alert you that any automatically tagged references which have been updated due to a change of context and ought to be checked.
To check them, you can double-click on each one to bring up the floating toolbar, then click Go to ref to go to the target of the reference.
If the reference still appears correct to you, go to the Document Checks pane on the right-hand side of the Editor screen, locate the entry relating to that reference (clicking on each will highlight the relevant reference in the Editor), and click the ‘Confirm reference is valid’ quick-fix option:
Alternatively, double-click on the text of the reference to bring up the floating toolbar, select Edit ref, and in the modal scroll down and change the Status from ‘Check' to ‘Valid’. Then click Save to save the changed status.
If the reference target appears incorrect to you, it is advisable to re-read the provision in which the reference appears and consider why the target of the reference has changed - there may be a good reason why the target has been updated. If you still aren’t sure why the target is incorrect, you may then choose to delete the reference and re-create it manually (for example if it is an internal reference which has been incorrectly tagged as an external reference). Alternatively, you can right-click on the reference and choose ‘Ignore reference’ to remove the link and also exclude the reference from further consideration by any re-tagging operations.
Multiple reference tags (mref) should surround two or more references. The tags should be removed if they contain only one or no references.
A range reference element (rref) should contain two references. The element can be removed if it contains only one or no references.
Both of these warnings relate to reference tags which may not be needed and which should be removed from your document.
mref and rref tags are automatically added to your document where there are references which contain a range of target provisions or a combination of references to provisions at different levels of a document, or partial ranges. The tags are necessary for the correct functioning of Lawmaker’s automatic tagging function, but in rare cases they can sometimes end up left behind in inappropriate locations, usually where a reference originally contained several component parts but now only consists of a single reference to a specific provision.
The Document Check pane provides a quick-fix option which will remove the unnecessary mref or rref tags: