Gidday Whatever Your Name Is...
Yeah, well you must have figured it out, because your second question (I am
reading the threads alphabetically...) indicates you have it working ...
I had Microsoft Word for the Mac on the phone yesterday. They had me
search for "multiple indexes" in the help menu. Which I did and I
learned all about the switches. After an hour and a half, with them
leading me through, I got no farther than where I was when I called
them. We followed the instructions for multiple indexes, but after
trying several ways of making it work, it didn't. It is because to get
multiple indexes with those instructions, you have to index different
parts of the document, via bookmarks, which give you individual
indexes. But I want the whole document to have two indexes, as I stated
before.
Sorry: You're talking to Microsoft Product Support Services. Those guys
try very hard, but they are young "Computer People" who do a
"familiarisation course" for the multiple products they are trying to assist
people with. It's a tough job, and someone has to do it...
However, the people you talk to in here are "Industry Professionals". We
often don't know much about computers, but we have an entire career's worth
of experience in doing what you do for a living. We specialise in only ONE
product, and we probably know it better than many of the people who wrote
the program.
I have been writing professionally since 1973: I am a fellow technical
writer, I specialise in books in the 2,500 to 35,000 page range. Last time
I did multiple indexes was in a 35,000-page set of mainframe manuals.
I do "this" for a living. The quality of advice you get in here will be an
order of magnitude better than it is realistic to expect from the Help Desk
(if you meet us professionally, you will soon discover that we also charge a
lot more for our services than the guys on the Help Desk...)
Your man on the Help Desk looked at the "Bookmark" method. That's because
he's never built an index in his life
One uses the bookmark method to
build a single index for a single "part" of a manuscript. A professional
would be more likely to have each part in a separate file, so the bookmark
method is almost never used for indexes. It is best used for "Chapter
TOCs", where you have an independent Table of Contents for each chapter.
You want to build multiple indexes, one for each kind of entry, from the
entire text. The reverse of what the Help desk guy understood...
You need the "Type" switch, the "\f" switch that I referred you to. The
"\f" switch assigns a "type" to each index tag. That index tag will then be
compiled only into an Index built with an INDEX tag that contains a matching
Type switch.
If you are using type switches, and you want the same index term to appear
in multiple indexes, you must use multiple tags; one for each Type, for each
occurrence of each index term.
To have each instance of the term included in your index, you must have a
tag on each occurrence of that term.
You cannot use switches in a concordance file. You cannot use switches with
"Mark All".
You state that it is possible to mark my two concordance files (my
document is a very large technical book)
NO!!! I never said that. I said "You cannot include switches (of any kind)
in a concordance file."
can you explain how I would do that?
No. You cannot do that. What you CAN do is first tag all of your terms
without any switches, then visit each tag and add the switch.
If you insist on persisting with that stupid concordance file, then do the
following:
1) Set all of your terms in a single concordance file and run it. That
will tag every term in the book in a single operation.
2) THEN you need to scroll through the document manually and assign the
correct switch to each tag.
If you want to automate this, it makes the job a bit more complex. Do this
instead:
Make the concordance file "mark" the index tags for you as you put them in.
We know that the concordance file will not add switches to the tags for you,
but it will add text. You can add text that will not be found elsewhere in
the document that you can later Find/Replace to be the switches.
You create a string of letters or numbers that will not be found anywhere
else in the text and put it in the concordance file on the end of the index
entry for each term. You then use the concordance to "mark" the place where
you want the "switch" inside each index tag. Then you run a find/replace to
change the marker into the switch.
For example: say you want to tag "Sam Benton" and have it in the "Names"
index. Your Index tag may look like this:
{ XE "Benton, Samuel" } and you need to change that to:
{ XE "Benton, Samuel" \f"n" } to include the tag in the "Names" index.
In your concordance file, you would search for "Sam Benton" and you would
add the index tag "Benton, Samuel IDXSlashEfEn" You would add the
"IDXSlashEfEn" marker to each entry in the Names concordance file.
You would then run both concordance files. Then you would reveal your
hidden text, so you can see what is in the XE tags, and use Find/Replace to
find IDXSlashEfEn and change all of them to \f"n"
If I changed all my tags in my document to be divided between the
names index and the regular index via the switches, when I go to make
the separate indexes, how do I tell it that I want only the \b ones or
the \f ones in the individual indexes?
Go read the Help topic for the "INDEX field code" again
You must add
the matching "\f"n"" switch to the "Names" index tag, and the "\f"b"" switch
to the "Book" index tag.
Part of your problem is that you have a mixture of XE tags, some have
switches and some don't. I promised you that this condition would be highly
entertaining (for onlookers...). For yourself, as you have discovered, it's
a very frustrating mess. Use Find/Replace to haul all of the tags out of
that document and start again. Trust me: it's quicker to pull them all out
and do it again...
I am so frustrated with this, I have spent days trying to get two
indexes, my boss is getting impatient to have a final product, and this
is the last piece to complete. I am desperate for any help you can
give!
Tell your boss that if it takes less than one working day per 100 pages to
build a good index, then you are doing better than a professional indexer.
There are people whose sole profession is compiling indexes. For long and
important technical documents, it pays to hire one. But THEY will insist on
one day per 100 pages to do a good job, and you should, too.
You will get a good result, and it will be accurate. But your boss needs to
understand that it won't happen until the last few minutes of the last day.
That's like anything else you do with a computer: you spend months or weeks
building the solution, and the solution then produces the result in ten
minutes. Before the solution is complete, you have nothing at all. After
it runs, you have a completed job! That's why those of us in the software
industry talk about "The mythical 90 per cent complete". The joke is that
if a program is 90 per cent complete, it remains 100 per cent not working,
just like it was before you started!!
I am sorry: You are taking on a very technical and complicated area of
using Microsoft Word. Word is only "simple" when you're writing a letter to
Mom. It's the best application in the world for large technical manuals,
but when you use it for those, you need to have the time to fully understand
the powerful tools involved; and you must work very, very precisely. That
means I have to really struggle to explain myself completely clearly, and
you have to read really carefully.
If you need any more help, give me a ring. My phone number is in the .sig.
If you expect a polite and coherent reply, consider what the time is in
Sydney before you ring
Now: *I* am getting very frustrated. I am sick of spending hours composing
answers to people who do not care enough to give me their name. A little
courtesy makes this a lot more fun for me. And we certainly don't get paid
to answer questions in here ...
--
Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.
John McGhie <
[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410
