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gsucci
Participant
December 5, 2016
Question

How to update an index?

  • December 5, 2016
  • 2 replies
  • 9205 views

Hello,

CS 6, Win 7 here,

I am creating Index References by selecting words in my document and pressing CTRL+7 (new cross reference).

I then press ADD ALL, and all the locations of the selected word are found and their page numbers are reported the next time I do a Create Index.

Now, the document is not done, and I may add one or more of the created References words through my document.

However, I cannot find a way to update the index with the new instances of the references. Of course, when I type a word that happens to be a reference in the index, the special charater is NOT created, so there must be another way to tell InDesign to re-add all the instances of the words into the index...

I tried to do a manual add all again, once selected the word, again, but InDesign doubles the markers, and therefore I have many double page numbers in the index.

How do I update the index?

Thank you

      This topic has been closed for replies.

      2 replies

      Peter Kahrel
      Community Expert
      Peter KahrelCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      December 5, 2016

      After doing Add All a second time you will indeed see more than one index marker on the page in the Index panel. But that in the Index panel only: when you generate/update the index, each page number is listed just once.

      You shouldn't do Vinny's suggested replacement, because you can't be sure that two (or more) adjacent index marker are for the same topic.

      Peter

      G
      gsucciAuthor
      Participant
      December 5, 2016

      Sorry, yes, the double counting happens only on the Index panel, not the actual index in the document.

      Still, I am really puzzled by this behaviour: TOC do update automatically...

      So, this means that I should create an index at the very end of the writing, when the text is least likely to change...?

      Thank you!

      regards

      Gio

      Peter Kahrel
      Community Expert
      Peter KahrelCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      December 5, 2016

      It's not really puzzling. When you do Add All, Indesign doesn't check whether a found item already has an index marker. And that you see the same page number several times is logical too: an item can occur twice on the same page, but a change in pagination can cause one of the entries to move to another page.

      Anyway, you can add entries to the index while you write and you can generate the index at any stage to check it. Just remember to generate the final index when you're done writing.

      P.

      vinny38
      vinny38
      Legend
      December 5, 2016

      Hi

      as far as I know, there is no native way to automatically re-add a new instance into an existing index.

      The normal way, would be to manually add it while typing (not "add all"), but I understand it's not great. You may forget to add some (many)...

      I tried to do a manual add all again, once selected the word, again, but InDesign doubles the markers, and therefore I have many double page numbers in the index.

      Indesign doubles markers, that's right... and surely it isn't great, but what do you mean by having double page numbers in index?

      The index generates only page number only once, even if the entry is indexed several times on that page?

      So, you could live with it, even though it's not academic.

      More academic: use the "add all" feature, then use a GREP query in order to delete doubles:

      Search (~I)(~I)

      Replace $1

      You may also have a look at existing scripts that might help you to achieve what you want:

      http://indesignsecrets.com/alternatives-indesign-indexing.php

      I don't use those scripts so I won't advice..

      Hope that helps

      Vinny

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