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Fritz Hansen
Inspiring
July 18, 2019
Question

Indexing proper names

  • July 18, 2019
  • 1 reply
  • 570 views

I need to create an index from a facebook—a book of photos with names and some basic details for each person. I am using a paragraph style for the name and hometown that uses a nested style to change the font after a forced line break (hometown on second line). Is there a way to automate the indexing using the paragraph style (or any other way) to select all the names in the entire book (there are hundreds of them) and create index entries (last name, first name)? A GREP search & replace? Script? The index will be Last Name, First Name, page number only. No categories or subcategories. I can't be the first person who has had to do this.

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1 reply

Community Expert
July 22, 2019

Hi Fritz,

can you show a sample screenshot with hidden characters showing and frame edges showing?

If you could isolate the text with last name and first name by doing a GREP Find pattern one would be able to apply a character style to the names. That would be the first step for running a script by Peter Kahrel that does the index:

InDesign: Index from character styles | Peter Kahrel

Or perhaps you already have a list of names in a separate text file?

Then read on here: InDesign: InDesign: Index from word list | Peter Kahrel

If that will not fit your needs read the whole chapter abouts scripts Peter Kahrel offers about Indexes and Concordances:

Indexes, word lists, and concordances | Peter Kahrel

Regards,
Uwe