Non-dictionary words in Index

Hi there

You seem to be expecting the index to work in a way similar to search and it's an entirely different animal.

Here's what's happening. With Search, you see nothing in the long vertical area below where you type UNTIL you type a word and click a button to tell the WebHelp to perform the search. At that point, any topics that contain a match for the term (or terms) that have been found.

The Index is a different thing. When the end user opens the Index, they see a long list of terms in the window before anything is typed. Usually the index begins with terms beginning with numbers. With the index, you create terms that you anticipate the user will use to find topics. You then map those topics to the terms. In actual use, as the user begins to type, the code that drives the Index begins attempting to match up the terms as the user types. And in the perfect scenario, the user types a few characters, sees what they are hoping to find, then clicks the term to visit the topic mapped to the term.

Now, let's say that you type a string of characters that is not listed in the Index and as such are not mapped to any topics. Likely, the index will be presented with the highlight still showing on the closest match. For example, suppose you typed "Liverwurst" but for some reason it wasn't in the index but "LiverPool" was. LiverPool would be highlighted but there would be no actual mapping to show, even though you had typed something and something was highlighted.

Hopefully that makes sense... Rick