Source: Combine Cross-references
Source: Formatting Cross-refrences
When working with cross-references, you might need different formats. I was looking for only number, what that means is that I wanted the text to be something like ”… is shown in Fig. 1 …” but Word’s MacOS cross-reference has some limitations in its UI, it doesn’t have a “only number” option under “Insert reference to:”, so I went online looking for a solution and to my surprise, Word has a very handy key combination “Alt + F9”
F9
Updates or calculates selected field
Alt + F9
Toggle all fields in the document
The fix
Once you see the field text, you can add \# 0 to the field:
{ REF _Ref121212121 \# 0}
This will display only numbers instead of label AND number
Also, add \* Charformat so stays in the same format as the text
surrounding it.
Before
"... is shown in Fig. FIGURE 1 ..."
After
"... is shown in Fig. 1 ..."