Afternoon Peter,
Thank you for the responses. I am taking four old timey reference works and combining them into one modern book. The text pages represent three sets of records merged together. I will end up with an Indesign "book" containing four files: front matter, text, survey images, and an index. I am guessing it will be somewhere around 600 pages or so. As for InDesign crashing, it has happened all too often. And on this computer it has happended twice. 'Tis a brand new computer that I home-built with all the best toys. It cost me northward of $3,900 and everything was installed fresh. As for others and the "crash and trash" problem, it has been written about so often as to seem normal workflow for ID.
The "1, 2, 3" numbers represent the page of the second portion of the PDF (the surveys / File 2). Clicking on a number, when it is correct, takes you to the survey image. Clicking on the survey image takes you back to the text entry. I can easily set the view in the options of the hyperlink or cross reference.
The end of it is that I after I have the text and the images in place in File 1 and File 2, I will have to manually come back and update the "1, 2, 3" references. InDesign, at least my version, cannot handle automatically updating the links and numbers.
As for your last thought, yeah, as soon as I win the lottery.
I will figure this one out though.
Cordially,
A. Wayne Webb