Ignored Blank characters in Word 2003 Index

[Ray Pixley]

I having problems using index in Word 2003 where I need to index numbers such
as 1., 2., 10. But in this example cited, the index is sorted as 1., 10., 2.
where as I want them sorted as 1., 2., 10. A theoretical way around this
would be to specify in a concordance file a space character before a number,
but index ignores them. As for changing them to A., B., etc., that's not
allowed for legal, acccounting, and adversarial negotiation reasons - I'm
compelled to keep this numbering style in the document. Besides, they are
not outline headings. How do I get the index by concordance feature to sort
flagged items numerically?

 

[Jay Freedman]

I having problems using index in Word 2003 where I need to index numbers such
as 1., 2., 10. But in this example cited, the index is sorted as 1., 10., 2.
where as I want them sorted as 1., 2., 10. A theoretical way around this
would be to specify in a concordance file a space character before a number,
but index ignores them. As for changing them to A., B., etc., that's not
allowed for legal, acccounting, and adversarial negotiation reasons - I'm
compelled to keep this numbering style in the document. Besides, they are
not outline headings. How do I get the index by concordance feature to sort
flagged items numerically?

Unless you're able to prefix the numbers with a zero (01., 02., ...
09., 10.), I don't think the index field can do what you want -- its
sorting method is strictly characterwise alphabetical.

A workaround would be to unlink the index field (Ctrl+Shift+F9) after
the index is complete and updated. That will convert it from a field
into plain text. Then you can manually rearrange the entries to fit
the scheme you want.

The disadvantage of this is that, since the index is no longer a
field, it won't update if you add more entries to the document. You'd
have to delete the existing index, create a new index field, unlink
it, and move the number entries again.

 

[Ray Pixley]

Unless you're able to prefix the numbers with a zero (01., 02., ...
09., 10.), I don't think the index field can do what you want -- its
sorting method is strictly characterwise alphabetical.

A workaround would be to unlink the index field (Ctrl+Shift+F9) after
the index is complete and updated. That will convert it from a field
into plain text. Then you can manually rearrange the entries to fit
the scheme you want.

The disadvantage of this is that, since the index is no longer a
field, it won't update if you add more entries to the document. You'd
have to delete the existing index, create a new index field, unlink
it, and move the number entries again.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit.

Prefixing with a 0 is not what I wanted, and manually rearrange the index to
overcome this program bug is much too time consuming for what should be a
common sense feature. The fact that its an ASCII sort is irrrelevant, a
space character has a lower ASCII number than a "0" character. Why is there
no way to get index to recognize a space as a character?

 

[Jay Freedman]

Prefixing with a 0 is not what I wanted, and manually rearrange the index to
overcome this program bug is much too time consuming for what should be a
common sense feature. The fact that its an ASCII sort is irrrelevant, a
space character has a lower ASCII number than a "0" character. Why is there
no way to get index to recognize a space as a character?

The Word developers programmed it that way. A space character is
considered a separator, not part of a word.

You can argue with Microsoft as much as you like -- Lord knows I've
done it often enough -- but I doubt very much that this is ever going
to change. To get them to even consider changing code of this kind
(which probably hasn't been touched since Word 95 or so), they require
a business case: How many more copies of Office will be sold if it's
changed, or how many will they lose if it isn't changed?
Realistically, the answer is "not many".