TurboLaw Help Center
"It's a rarity today to call a company with a technical support question, speak with a live person, get the answer I need, and have the issue resolved in under three minutes. TurboLaw has kept providing a great product and service over the years and never let me down - many thanks."
Attorney Kevin P. Whitaker
Weymouth, MA
Getting Help
"Error! Reference source not found" appears in printed document
Details:
When printing a document that you have edited from TurboLaw, the text "Error! Reference source not found" appears in the printed copy; even though it did not first appear on your screen until you sent the document to your printer. (In some cases, the "Error! Reference Souce Not Found" text may appear on your screen.)
Resolution:
In some TurboLaw documents, text that appears in the gray form fields in the document is "referenced" subsequent times throughout the document. An example of this might be a date that appears in a motion and is then automatically repeated in the Notice of Hearing and Certificate of Service where applicable. If, during editing, the original gray form field is deleted or over-written, Word will be unable to find the "referenced" field - because it has been deleted. This is what causes Word to display the error message "Error! Reference Source Not Found."
Once a form field that is referenced has been deleted, you must review the document and replace the error message with whatever text should appear there. If you do not see the error message on your screen (for example, if it only appears when you print a document), then Word is not "refreshing" your fields. To force Word to refresh your fields, simply reprotect the document if it is still unprotected (click the "Edit Document" button), then press the <TAB> key on your keyboard. This will force Word to refresh the document and all its fields, displaying any "reference fields" that are missing their reference source. You can then edit them as needed.
If you encounter the "Error! Reference Source Not Found" message, all you need to do is, with the document unprotected, highlight the error message and type or paste in the correct word or phrase that belongs there. NOTE: When the document is protected you cannot delete a form field (that may be doubling also as a reference source), only the contents of that form field. You will therefore not get the "Error! Reference Source Not Found" message.
If you encounter the "Error! Reference Source Not Found" message frequently, you may be overwriting the form fields in the document - which is the same as deleting them. Watch carefully when you type in the gray-shaded form fields - if, when you begin to type, the gray shading vanishes, then you have just overwritten the field. This means that the document is currently unprotected (you have clicked the "Edit Document" button). You can only type in the gray-shaded form fields when the document is protected - if you try to type in them when the document is unprotected, you will overwrite (erase) the form field, instead of typing in it. To type in a form field, rather than overwriting it, click the "Edit Document" button to protect the document. You can click the "Edit Document" button again if you need to make changes outside of the gray form fields.
Unfortunately, if a document requires heavy editing, there is no sure way to avoid this problem, as this behavior is caused by Microsoft Word itself. However, in general, if you find yourself editing a document and deleting gray form fields, you may want to check for these types of errors using the method described above before you print the document - just in case you have deleted a referenced form field. This is a common phenomenon in what we call "hard editing" but is harmless once you know what it is and how to correct it.
Article number: TL00243
Product: TurboLaw Document Software
Applies to version: 2.43
Article added on: 05-24-2005