Add-on for Google Docs
Captions & Cross Reference for Google Docs
Figure captions and cross references in Google Docs: number your figures, tables and equations, and refer to them anywhere in the document. Move something, add something, delete something, and one click on Update all renumbers every caption and refreshes every reference — keeping your links and your formatting as they were.
Coming soon on the Google Workspace Marketplace
What it does
Captions that count themselves, references that point at the right thing, and one button that puts both right after you have been moving work around.
Numbered captions
Insert “Figure 1”, “Table 2” or “(3)” under an image, above a table or beside an equation. Pick your own label — “Fig.”, “Abbildung #”, “Eq. (#)” — and each label counts on its own, so “Figure S1” is numbered apart from the rest.
References that click through
Choose any caption or heading from a searchable list, and insert it as “Figure 3”, “figure 3”, plain “3”, the heading’s own words, “2.1” or “Section 2.1”. A reader can click one to jump to what it points at.
One button to fix everything
Update all renumbers in document order and touches nothing but the numbers inside your references. “see fig. 3a” becomes “see fig. 4a”, and the font, the colour and the bold stay as you set them.
Warnings rather than silent failure
If a target was deleted you get a list of the references that broke, each with a Show button that selects it in the document. One problem never stops the rest of the update, and Check finds problems without changing anything.
It survives real editing
Cut and paste a figure with its caption, duplicate a caption, or paste a section in from another document. Update all re-links all of it.
Chapter numbering
Number captions per chapter if you want them that way: Figure 2.1, 2-1 or 2–1.
Lists of figures and tables
Insert a list whose every entry links to its caption. Update all keeps it current.
Headings too
Refer to a heading by its text or by its number, and the reference follows when the heading is renamed or renumbered.
Long documents
Made for theses and reports of 300 pages and more: it reads the document once and writes back only what changed.
Good to know
Three things worth knowing before you install, rather than after.
Links instead of page numbers
Google Docs gives an add-on no page numbers, so a list of figures links to each caption rather than printing the page it is on.
The tab you are looking at
The add-on works in the document tab you are viewing.
Re-pointing a broken reference
Select it, pick the new target and click Insert.
Help and support
Something not working, or a label the add-on will not number the way you need? Write to hello@askomni.app and say which document and which step; you will get an answer from the person who wrote it.
Private by design
The add-on can see one document: the one you opened it in. Nothing it reads leaves Google, and nothing reaches us.
Only the document you are in
It asks for two permissions: to work in the document it was opened in, and to show its sidebar. Your other files, your Drive, your mail and your contacts are out of its reach.
No server to send anything to
The add-on contacts nothing. It runs inside Google Apps Script, so your document never travels anywhere on its account.
No analytics, no accounts
Nothing to sign up for, no tracking, no advertising, and no use of your text to train anything.
Its notes live in your document
Numbering, bookmarks and your settings are kept with the document itself. Delete the document and they are gone; we never had a copy.
Google Docs™ is a trademark of Google LLC. This add-on is not made or endorsed by Google.