Watch Out! 6 Pitfalls of Linking in MS Word - Medical Writer Headache, Issue No. 1
Regulatory documents, such as drug submissions and study reports, are enhanced by many references or “links” to sources that are internal or external to the document. These links are indicated in the document by a colored text (blue) that, when clicked on, brings the reader directly to that specific information source. However, the linking procedure in Word can be a bit complicated, and thereby creates extra work and requires additional time for the crafting and completion of that document.
Unfortunately, time is a luxury that most medical writers often cannot afford.
Neal Azrolan, PhD, MBA, esteemed medical writer and Szilárd Németh, Sales and Marketing Specialist from the team behind the OnStyle add-in co-author this this article to explore 6 of the most common pitfalls of the linking procedure in Microsoft Word.
Link issues, involving both Hyperlinks and Cross-references, if remaining unnoticed can seriously undermine the submission process and can possibly cause very inconvenient situations for the author(s). Besides shedding light on these issues and how they emerge, the article details the OnStyle add-in’s approach to finding and fixing them.
Thankfully, there are some add-in programs to Word that can simplify the linking procedure and can save much time and agita for the medical writer. An excellent example of one of these programs, OnStyle, has been invaluable for us and our colleagues during the creation and reviewing of regulatory documents.
Szilárd and I present here 6 instances where issues with hyperlinks commonly occur (Neal), and how we use OnStyle to help us with them (Szilard).
1. Internal Hyperlink With Mismatched Target
Neal:
Imagine that you’re in the middle of writing some Safety or Efficacy text, using an internal reference as a data source, and when you click on the hyperlink in the text it points to something totally unrelated to what you’re referring to. At first, you may not even realize that the target is incorrect! Sometimes you must look through a lot of text or many tables and figures to find the correct source. At other times, I have found myself contacting a busy Clinical Scientist, or a Safety or Efficacy Clinician to see if they can help you find the correct reference source. Now, imagine how time-consuming and aggravating that could be! As a medical writer, the last thing you want to do is continually bother one of these team members.
Szilárd:
As the name suggests this OnStyle check module helps you find those links where the written text and the target are mismatched (i.e. the link is pointing to the wrong destination). This can happen, for example, upon inserting a table into the document before the targeted table; in this case, the table number gets automatically increased, but the link text remains the same. The OnStyle module finds hyperlinks in the document where the link text points to a table, figure, or section, but the numbers in the link text do not match the numbers in the actual table, figure, or section. This not only saves a lot of time and effort, but also spares the clinicians that you work with!
2. Broken Cross-Reference
Neal:
This has happened to me more than a few times…. Similar to number 1 above, while writing or reviewing a section of a summary or any submission text and there is a blue text reference. When you click on the blue hyperlink to the cross-reference, instead of the wrong target, you get taken to the beginning of the document. After updating the cross-reference field, you receive a note saying “Error…” Meaning that there is NO TARGET! Talk about frustrating!
Szilárd:
This OnStyle module is specifically designed to find issues where a cross-reference is established, but for some reason the bookmark is not available. This could be the result of, for example, the creation of a cross-reference to a heading title that was later deleted. The module even comes with two correction functions: Remove Cross-Reference will keep the display text and remove the cross-reference; and Remove Text, which removes the text itself.
3. Internal Hyperlink With No Target
Neal:
When putting together a Safety, an Efficacy, or a Pharmacology Summary, I have often spent much time trying to find the data that corresponds to the text you are writing. When you lose the connection between the text currently being written and its corresponding target [i.e. data in a graph (Figure), Table, or mentioned in the text], it can be very time-consuming and frustrating for the writer to find the specific data being discussed or written.
Szilárd:
Hyperlinks, for example, pointing to a bookmark that has been deleted, are broken links; they are going to direct you to the beginning of the document, which makes navigation a very tiring task. This check module scans the document for hyperlinks that do not lead to a valid target. There is a correction module in OnStyle that is available for this issue, that removes the hyperlink and leaves the text. If you know where the hyperlink should be directing the reader, you can use the OnStyle Internal Link tool to quickly insert a new target. Because (unlike the Word built-in Link tool) the OnStyle tool can be docked as a pane on your screen, you can have it open all the time while writing and correcting links. Easy as pie!
4. Hyperlink To External Document
Neal:
Sometimes, while writing a submission summary and I intend to reference an external manuscript or study report data, someone actually moves that document file to a different location and doesn’t tell you; the original location then becomes irrelevant, and the hyperlink will not open. When the latter happens, there are often many blue texts that do not point to anything! Talk about exasperating!
Szilárd:
To save you time, this check module reports all links in the document that lead to an external document. Two auto-corrections are available for this issue. The Remove Hyperlink correction removes hyperlink from the text. The other, Set External Hyperlink Style formats the hyperlink in a way that it follows the standard for external hyperlinks (e.g. red text color). This formatting depends on how OnStyle is set-up for your workflow.
5. Internal Hyperlink Not Set
Neal:
Especially when I was a novice submission medical writer, I would get very involved in what I was writing, with the (internal) sources in front of me on my second and third monitor, and I would forget to provide a hyperlink to the source table, figure, or other sections of the same summary. One of two things happen when I did this, either the reader/reviewer tries to find where you actually got that data from and wastes a lot of time doing so, or your QC person finds it and lets you know that it is missing and that you are not compliant according to guidelines. We do want to be compliant, don’t we?!
Szilárd:
This module finds the text parts of the document that are referring to an existing table, figure, or section, but their internal reference is not established yet. The correction for this issue is Scroll to Target, which scrolls to the page of the referred item and places the cursor on it. You can then place the hyperlink very easily with OnStyle’s aforementioned dedicated Internal Link tool.
6. Blue Text Not Linked
Neal:
While writing a submission summary and I am intending to refer to some data that should be hyperlinked, I sometimes either forget to create the hyperlink, and only have a blue text indicating a link, or I make an entire word blue, but I do not apply the hyperlink to all its letters. This can lead to confusion among readers as they could misinterpret a blue text as a hyperlink.
Szilárd:
Finding blue texts with no hyperlink, or cases of hardly detectable blue texts which are not links is faster using this check. Its extended use case is finding hyperlinks that do not cover the entirety of the blue text it’s placed on.
Summary
The above-mentioned issues can be quickly found and resolved with the OnStyle add-in in Word. OnStyle eases the burdens of medical writers by providing tools (specifically made for the medical writer) that accelerates both the authoring process as well as error checking (Review and QC). Linking as a process is time-consuming; in later stages of document development, checking the links one-by-one, sometimes even performed in multiple instances, is very wasteful of time and effort, especially when a deadline is approaching. Even if you do find and resolve these issues manually, in some cases there is no direct indication to what data might be associated with them. With almost 140 (ever-growing) functional checks, the Validation function in OnStyle scans the document in seconds and finds issues that could otherwise be extremely time-consuming (or virtually impossible!) to find manually. OnStyle is preconfigured with a suite of checks grouped into potential issue/solution types; one excellent example of these are Hyperlinks.
To see more details on hyperlinking issues using Word, as well as the complete list of checks and fixes available with OnStyle, visit our website (https://www.dachs.ch/onstyle/) and download the comprehensive list of inspections.
About the authors:
Neal Azrolan, PhD, MBA has been involved in medical writing since 1996, as a PhD graduate student at New York University. Much of his manuscript and grant writing was as an Assistant Professor at The Rockefeller University. He has written over 60 clinical manuscripts, as well as over 80 posters as a named author. He has also participated in both labelling and in submissions as a lead medical writer. As such, he has experience using several Word add-ins, including OnStyle. Besides having a passion for non-fiction, medical writing and poetry, Neal is also a musician and enjoys playing saxophone in The Whitehouse Wind Symphony[i], as well as writing music for and performing with The Central Jersey Saxophone Quartet[ii].
Szilárd Németh began his work at DACHS as an intern during his time at university and, since graduation, has transitioned to a full-time Sales and Marketing Specialist dedicating much of his time to OnStyle. He has been successfully building his expertise in marketing strategies, video content creation and in webinar creation and organization. In his spare time, Szilárd enjoys both hiking in the Bükk Mountains with friends as well as reading fantasy books.