Inspiring

Question

Indexing tools

Forum|Forum|8 months ago
July 27, 2025
4 replies
313 views

Hi friends!

After having given up my hope in producing my current major project (700 pg scholarly edition of ancient texts with comments and notes) in MS Word, which simply cannot cut it, I am moving everything to ID. No easy task. But I think it will pay off in the long run.

Presently I am looking for an add on helping me to create a good 4 level (sometimes) index. In Word I had an add on that shows the entry hirarachy in a tree form (i.e. Places; Asia; India; Calcutta etc) and let's me add branches directly from that tree view and then mark entries based on that hirarachy.

Is there anything even remotely similar for ID?

Thanks

SF

Peter Kahrel

Community Expert

> Will your tool know how to process that?

The tool Susan mentioned, IndexMatic, does not process existing index entries. It creates an index on the basis of a word list. It by-passes InDesign's in dex feature, it doesn't add index markers in your document.

> Well actually I have already marked index entries in MS Word for about a tenth of the file. Am I to understand that I should continue doing so

When you import your Word file(s) into InDesign the index markers in the Word file will apprea in the InDesign file.

> and the take those markers to the tool you mentioned?

No. Index markers in the INDesign file have nothing to do with IndexMatic. There are two ways to do an index: mark up the InDesign file (which you've done 10 per cent of) or use IndexMatic (or a similar tool that creates an index from a word list.

Since you mentioned that you're dealing with a scholarly text, adding words from a word list is probably not an option. I would move everything over to InDesign and mark up the index in InDesign.

Peter Kahrel

Community Expert

IndexMatic creates an index from an external word list. I think Suzzy's files already contain index markers from the Word files.

SuzzyFlamingoAuthor

Inspiring

Well actually I have already marked index entries in MS Word for about a tenth of the file. Am I to understand that I should continue doing so and the take those markers to the tool you mentioned?

In word the look like this places:Asia:index:Calcutta

Will your tool know how to process that?

Susan Culligan

Inspiring

You'd have to code the Word file from scratch, using a keyword list of the desired index entries. If you only have 1/10 of the file done, that might be worth it, but someone else may have a better option.

Susan Culligan

Inspiring

I've found IndexMatic very good—needs a little coding, but nothing too complex. The documentation (user manual) is pretty easy to follow, although it does require some trial and error. Price is good too; I don't know what it is now, but it was around $40 when I bought it several years ago. You can check it out at https://indiscripts.com/category/projects/IndexMatic.

Peter Kahrel

Community Expert

The Index panel is where you see the topics and page references after you created them: Window > Type & Tables > Index.

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