The illustrative embodiment of the present invention provides a method for cross-referencing, searching and displaying entries in a document publishing system, such as a web-publishing system or a desktop publishing system. The document publishing system uses input data such as email messages, attachments to emails, web clippings, and directly input text from a user to create new documents. The illustrative embodiment assigns an entry identification number to each new entry, an item identification number to each segment of the entry, and user-assigned labels to user-selected subparts of each entry. The entry identification numbers, item identification numbers and labels are automatically cross-linked by a series of algorithms. The identification numbers and labels are cross-linked with stored references which are used to dynamically generate HTML links. Changes in the content of a entry are saved as updates, where the latest version of a entry is cross-linked to previous versions. The cross-linking of the entries enables a user to search back through time for the content of previous versions or alternatively, to see the latest version of a previous entry.