Creating an index from PDF

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
July 15, 2020
2 replies
10743 views

I'm creating a book, using InDesign as the source file to create a 2-volume, 750-page (each!) book. It's an A-Z directory of homeopathic remedies and each chapter is its own InD document ... which will be compiled into an InDb document before exporting as PDF as final printing. The author wants to add an index. Unfortunately, the original Word documents that I flowed into InD did not have index markers. Is there any way to create an index from within Acrobat Pro once the InD document is exported?

As it's very complicated information, the author has to indicate what needs to be indexed. I'm hoping I can provide him with the PDFs and he make the indications there, which most likely still have to go back into InDesign to format etc. I'm trying to avoid having to manually add them into the InD document myself.

I found somewhere online that you can somehow highlight words in Acrobat and use commenting to create an index but have not been successful. Any help appreciated!!

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try67

Community Expert

Do not try to do this in Acrobat! I'm sure ID has an automatic way of doing it, as it's a layout application and this is a classic book layout task. Acrobat is NOT a layout application and doing it there will be 100 times more difficult.

Amal.

Legend

Hi there

We are sorry for the trouble. as described you are lookg to create index from within the Acrobat DC once the document is exported to PDF

Begin by creating a folder to contain the PDFs you want to index. All PDFs should be complete in both content and electronic features, such as links, bookmarks, and form fields. If the files to be indexed include scanned documents, make sure that the text is searchable. Break long documents into smaller, chapter-sized files, to improve search performance. You can also add information to a file’s document properties to improve the file’s searchability.

Please take a look at the help article https://helpx.adobe.com/in/acrobat/using/creating-pdf-indexes.html for more information and see if that works for you.

Hope it will help

Regards

Amal

acmegfxAuthor

Participant

Don't think you quite understand what I'm hoping to do. There is no embedded index in the document. I want my client to be able to indicate (somehow?!) the words and phrases within the PDF that will export the same as if the index markers were embedded in the Word document, or the same way you create an index from InDesign ... and be at the end of the book.

That make sense?

Bernd Alheit

Community Expert

Create the index in InDesign.

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