Not long ago, I read someone’s argument that Microsoft Office 97 was a waste of money because each application was supposedly similar to applications provided by Microsoft for free with Windows 95. Microsoft Word was compared to Word Pad, which permits the creation of Rich Text Files.
The person may have been right in that most people do not use Word for much more than can be done with Word Pad, but perhaps that is because most people are unaware of Word’s indexing capabilities allowing users to generate an index for a text. This is very useful for publishing. Unfortunately, Microsoft’s documentation is not very clear on how to proceed. So, after some trial and error, I have figured out how it’s done.
1- Look in your text for a word that you want indexed. Select that word by clicking onto it, making it appear like so.
2- Go to the top menu bar. Select Insert. Scroll down to and select Index and Tables.
3- A dialog box appears. You are in the tabbed section called Index. On the right side, there is a list of buttons all one on top of the other. Select the button marked Mark Entry
4- A new dialog box appears. You will find that the word originally selected is entered for you under the heading Entry. Underneath that is the heading Subentry. If you want to mark all occurrences of the word, press the Mark All button located at the bottom right of the dialog box. If you just want to mark the one selected occurrence, press the Mark button. For the sake of speed, you may want to use Mark All and then go through the index tags manually in order to enter subheadings to better organise your work.
5- One way to more speedily establish your index is to select Edit from the menu bar, select Find and to enter a word that you wish to have marked. This returns an already-selected instance of the word which can then be subjected to steps 2 to 4. Though this helps speed up the process, to create a really good index requires much work and patience and you will probably have to change entries manually.
6- You will find that the paragraph markers appear along with the tags that accompany each marked word. The tags disappear if you de-select the paragraph marker button on the upper toolbar. They reappear when you want them to reappear. When printed, the length of the text is that without the tags, not that with them.
7- All words marked for indexing are followed by the following tag: {XE “heading:subheading”}. If you want to insert a subheading for an existing tag, enter that after a colon as shown above. Write down a list of subheadings that you plan to use in the case of oft-mentioned headings in order to improve your index’s organisation. Make sure that you do not enter similar subheadings that are different because of spelling mistakes or the use of different cases of a word.
8- You are able to enter headings that are different from the text being tagged. In the case of names, this permits you to mark full names such as “Archie Leach” while your heading reads {XE “Leach, Archie”}. In this way, your index entry is will be entered as the person’s surname as is customary and not by his or her given name.
9- When you are ready to see the results of your work, generate the index in the following way; place the cursor below the text or wherever you want your index to appear. Then, return to the top menu. Select Insert. Scroll down to and select Index and Tables.
10- A dialog box appears again. You are again in the tabbed section called Index. On the right side, there is a list of buttons all one on top of the other. Select the button marked OK. That generates the index.
11- After the index is generated, you can gaze upon the results. You will find yourself having to make improvements. After doing so, right-click the generated index (the space occupied by the index output itself) and select Update Field Codes. That will re-generate the index to take into account changes that were made.