Figure reference \ref{fig:result} renders as ?? in PDF

Question

I have an article with the following figure (there are 2 small charts near each other, horizontally):

\begin{figure}[h]
  \centering
  \includegraphics{left-graph}
  \includegraphics{right-graph}
  \caption{My caption}\label{mylabel}
\end{figure}

I reference the figure with:

Figure~\ref{fig:result} shows bla-bla-bla.

The rendered PDF shows ?? instead of the figure number. I tried with the reference occurring both before and after the figure (in the LaTeX source), but it didn't make a difference.

The relevant packages I'm using are below (those removed are for titling).

\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage[letterpaper]{geometry}
\geometry{top=1.0in, bottom=1.0in, left=1.5in, right=1.0in}
\usepackage{flafter} % make sure figures do not appear before their text
\usepackage{sidecap} % use side captions for floats
\usepackage{subfig} % subfloats

I'm not sure what's wrong here, advice is appreciated. I'm using MiKTeX 2.8.

Thank you!

Allowing only [h] is not much. I would add some options resulting in [htp] for instance. See http://texblog.net/help/latex/figure.html for reference. — Stefan Kottwitz, Aug 17 '10 at 14:18

score 35 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 17 '10 at 13:58

35

Your labels don't match. Change the reference to \ref{mylabel} or the label to label{fig:result}

answered Aug 17 '10 at 13:58

Lev Bishop

45,462

Thanks, I had misinterpreted the meaning of the reference expression (I thought it was "show the current figure counter result"). – wishihadabettername Aug 17 '10 at 14:32
When I click on the pdf it doesn't jump to the page with the figure. What should I do? – skan Nov 05 '17 at 20:33
You need the package hyperref for that. – infinitezero Aug 15 '18 at 07:35

score 12 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 17 '16 at 05:50

12

I also had similar issue where pdflatex didn't update the Figure reference. I later found out that it is because of {\caption{.....}}\label{} incorrect usage. The \caption and \label commands have to be together like \caption{.....}\label{}. The caption command and its contents should not be enclosed with braces.

edited Mar 17 '16 at 05:50

Stefan Pinnow

29,535

answered Mar 17 '16 at 04:45

raman

193

3

Thank you for your contribution! I didn't think the order was important so my referencing wasn't working. Now, I've checked so that all of them are in the right order and it worked! – Gunelle Sep 23 '16 at 12:29
This answers so many questions. Great comment. – StiggyStardust Mar 01 '23 at 10:19

score 8 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 17 '10 at 14:23

8

Besides the mistake noted by Lev Bishop (assuming that you just did some incomplete editing for this post, and in reality the labels match), it is possible that you did not run latex enough times. For the labels to work out you need to run it at least twice.

answered Aug 17 '10 at 14:23

Aniko

540

The labels were not matching (see my comment to Lev's answer), but you get a vote for reminding me about running twice. – wishihadabettername Aug 17 '10 at 19:11

score 5 · Answer 4 · edited Aug 29 '17 at 23:50

5

this is how I did at my work ..

\begin{figure}[b!]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.3\textwidth]{sampleFig.jpg}
\caption{sampleFig \cite{sample}}
\label{sampleFig}
\end{figure}

and in the paragraph I put like :

\figurename{\ref(sampleFig)}

edited Aug 29 '17 at 23:50

Laurenz

273

answered Jun 04 '16 at 14:36

Shinichi1988

51

6

Welcome, do you know about \autoref{sampleFig} from package hyperref? It is much much better than your current way of doing stuff. – Johannes_B Jun 04 '16 at 14:53
When I click on the pdf it doesn't jump to the page with the figure. What should I do? – skan Nov 05 '17 at 20:33

Figure reference \ref{fig:result} renders as ?? in PDF

4 Answers4

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