Word indexing sucks

[Joseph M. Newcomer]

Right now I'm getting duplicate entries, e.g.,
GetToken 32
GetToken 38
GetToken 42

Some index entries have font information, some don't; I don't see obvious ways to control
it. I specify character environments explicitly, like 'reserved word', and sometimes I get
the desired font, sometimes I don't, and there is no apparent reason for this.

Actually, this indexing is worse than what I could do in the late 1960s. I don't even have
sort-order control, such as indexing '_This' as if it were 'This_'. Is there any way to
get intelligent indexing?

For that matter, I need indexes in PowerPoint documents! What I don't understand is how
Office as a "suite" has such inconsistent behavior across products (neither PowerPoint nor
Publisher support indexes!)

Any ideas how to get decent behavior? One of the few things FrameMaker actually gets right
is indexing (very little else is tolerable, but they got indexing perfect!)
joe

Joseph M. Newcomer [MVP]
email: (e-mail address removed)
Web: http://www.flounder.com
MVP Tips: http://www.flounder.com/mvp_tips.htm

 

[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

Hi Joseph,

You didn't mention the version of Word that you're using or the method you're using to tag index entries and create the index, but
you may want to also post this in the Word Formatting Long Documents newsgroup,
news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.word.formatting.longdocs .

---------------
Right now I'm getting duplicate entries, e.g.,
GetToken 32
GetToken 38
GetToken 42

Some index entries have font information, some don't; I don't see obvious ways to control
it. I specify character environments explicitly, like 'reserved word', and sometimes I get
the desired font, sometimes I don't, and there is no apparent reason for this.

Actually, this indexing is worse than what I could do in the late 1960s. I don't even have
sort-order control, such as indexing '_This' as if it were 'This_'. Is there any way to
get intelligent indexing?

For that matter, I need indexes in PowerPoint documents! What I don't understand is how
Office as a "suite" has such inconsistent behavior across products (neither PowerPoint nor
Publisher support indexes!)

Any ideas how to get decent behavior? One of the few things FrameMaker actually gets right
is indexing (very little else is tolerable, but they got indexing perfect!)
joe

Joseph M. Newcomer [MVP] >>
--
I hope this helps you,

Bob Buckland ?
MS Office System Products MVP

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