Index and Table of Contents

[thelisha]

I am working on a large policy manual (approximately 300 pages) at my job in
Word 2003 which has been worked on by numerous people, several times over the
years and in several versions of Word, so there are quite a few formatting
issues. Since I have finished updating it for this year I need to update the
Index and Table of Contents pages (TOC). The issue I have is there are lots
of marked text entries throughout the document that I want to remove because
some of the entries are not needed and don't apply to the latest version of
the manual, plus there are things that the entries are picking up that don't
belong in an index.(it is grabbing charts and whole sections of the document
and placing them in the TOC and index) I have set the document so that I can
view all of the hidden marks and there many, many entries so I am asking if
there is a way to: 1.) remove all the hidden index entries at once without
losing my other formatting/style designs and 2) possibly create a new index
and TOC in a faster way? I have read several documents that say you cannot
quickly create one, but I was wondering if Word 2003 had any new useful
features for at least making the process a little simpler. Any
suggestions/advice would be most appreciated!
Thanks so much!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

There are still no shortcuts to making a *useful* index, but it sounds as if
you're in the tabula rasa mode already anyway, so perhaps starting from
scratch with a new index would be easier in the long run. To remove all the
existing index entries, with Hidden text displayed, search for ^19 XE and
replace with nothing. For some hints on index creation (though I find that
the method you use depends a lot on the kind of material you're indexing),
see http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Numbering/CreateIndex.htm

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Not sure what your TOC situation is, but if you used TC fields to create it,
you can search for them similarly to Suzanne's answer re index fields.
There are fast ways to create TOCs, see here for a start:
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/toc/CreateATOC.html

 

[thelisha]

Thank you so much for your assistance, you just saved me weeks and weeks of
work because I had no idea how to do this! I am very appreciative of your
prompt response. Thanks again!
Thelisha Woods

 

[thelisha]

Thank you for your prompt response! Now that I have gotten rid of all the
previous index codes I can begin to make my new TOC/Index and this article is
a great start. I really appreciate all the help I have received in this
forum. Thanks again!
Thelisha Woods

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Glad I could help.