Create one index from multiple books

Hi Rachel:

This is an interesting question that I haven't contemplated before in InDesign. In FrameMaker, you can add books to books, so you can create a volume with individual books and make an index for everything, but that's not a feature of InDesign.

So the only idea I have is to create a third book (call it volume.indb) and add all of the chapters from both individual books into it. The index markers are going to come in with the chapters. You'll need to keep an eye on the numbering (page and paragraph) so that each book to make sure they are incrementing correctly. 

But by putting all of the indd files into a single volume/book, you can create an index from all the chapters.

If you open the original books, you can update numbering if necessary, and can work with those again too.

~Barb

You would need to combine all the InDesign files into one book to generate the index at once. But there is nothing stopping you from copying the index generated from one book and pasting it before or after the index in the other book.