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Participating Frequently
August 28, 2024
Question

How to Identify Missing or Incorrect Cross-References in a Manual Index

  • August 28, 2024
  • 2 replies
  • 4234 views

I am currently working on manually indexing over 6,000 entries in a book that contains countless cross-references within the index. Since I'm doing this chronologically and many of the referenced entries don't exist yet, I have to manually type or paste the cross-reference entry. Unfortunately, I’ve noticed that the editor who provided me with the file (a PDF with comments) occasionally made typos or omitted parts of the entry names.

Is there a way to identify cross-references in the index where the corresponding entry doesn't exist?

 

 

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2 replies

Peter Kahrel
Community Expert
Community Expert
August 28, 2024

Is there a way to identify cross-references in the index where the corresponding entry doesn't exist?

 

Not sure I understand this. It's not possible to have a cross-reference to a non-existing topic: when you create a cross-reference for a new topic, the referenced topic is created automatically.

bine_roAuthor
Participating Frequently
August 29, 2024

The topic is generated, but not a reference, since there needs to be an index marker for that. If I create an index and a cross-reference points to an incorrect or missing reference, it will be displayed as though the reference exists. The only way to verify this seems to be by manually checking each entry. And that is very time consuming, prone to error and since this index has throusands of entries, it's not really manageable.

 

What I probably need is a way to list the index entries with cross-references to unused topics?

I’ve attached an image to illustrate what I mean.

Robert at ID-Tasker
Legend
August 29, 2024

I'm afraid your ID-tasker won't be allowed from our IT-department. Anyway, I quickly made a sample document with correct and incorrect cross-references withing the index and attached them. Since the Adobe Community won't let me upload an indb file, you'd have to put them in a book file yourself.


@bine_ro 

 

There is nothing in the 1st document - but there is in the 2nd:

 

 

There are "links" to the original locations of your documents - column "Dest Doc Path".

 

There is not much available directly in your 2nd document:

 

 

 

ID-Tasker is extremely powerful tool - the free version, gives you access to the complete structer of your document(s) - in paid version ... well ... it's a completely different universe ...

 

Robert at ID-Tasker
Legend
August 28, 2024

If you work on a PC - even free version of my ID-Tasker should help you with browsing those.