Ref IDs moving to other fields when copying between databases

This is a new problem that has just started.  When I copy a reference from one database to another, the reference is automatically assigned a new ID.  Fine.  But the old Ref ID migrates to the end of the title and into the keywords.  Can anybody hazard a guess as to WHY is this happening??  I assume that this is something that I can tweak in the settings, but I’m not sure where to look. 

I’m not sure why it happens, but it was happening to me also - I got it to stop by turning off field numbers in the view menu thanks to a post by PTravis from 2008.

Also:

In the dialog box telling you that the references must be assigned a new reference ID: select “None” in the drop-down meny “Field to copy old Ref ID”.

As the previous poster said: “None” is default when the field numbers are turned off and “Title” is default when they are turned on. I wish I knew how to change this. It’s really annoying.