** This is my first issue I've tried hard to follow the process correctly -
including looking for similar issues. Apologies for any mistakes. **

The ability of OO Writer to use named cross references is one of its great
advantages over MS Word.

However, if an inserted cross reference points to a reference that does not
exist (usually because the text surrounding reference source has been deleted),
then the cross reference displays as a blank space.

When dealing with a large document with many named cross-references, if one of
the inserted references is subsequently deleted, then it can be extremely
difficult to locate referring cross references without extremely close and
error-prone proof reading.

A logical solution would seem to be to replace missing cross references with a
message such as "reference to missing reference: xxx".  This would allow errors
to be detected much more easily at the proof reading stage.  

MS Word does something similar with missing bookmarks. The difference is that
Word tends to drop them without warning...

I am going to attempt to attach a short sample document with cross-references to
two named references: ref-tree and ref-fruit.    The former (ref-trees) is
present in the document, and the cross reference displays correctly.  The latter
(ref-fruit) has been deleted and the cross reference shows as a blank space.