InDesign indexing driving me crazy

Thoughts on the system crashes:

1. Be sure your computer exceeds the minimum system requirements
   https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/system-requirements.html
2. Make sure InDesign has the current patches installed
3. Be wary of InDesign on an M1 Mac. There are still issues to work out. 
4. Break long InDesign files into sections or chapters and pull them back together with a book file. 
5. When InDesign begins to behave erratically, rebuild the preferences/cache
   https://www.rockymountaintraining.com/adobe-indesign-rebuilding-preferences-cache/
6. When a file begins to behave erratically, save it as .idml. Close, reopen and resave as .indd.

~Barb

Ok, @HeathenHarper:

Last question. (BTW, we highly recommend one question per post because it is easier for us to follow, for you to follow, and for others who need the same answer to locate it without having to dig through other things.)

One problem I’m having is with proper names, formatted last name, first name. Let’s say the name is Mary Smith. If I put her in as a reference and click the Add All button I get all the pages on which her name appears throughout the book. If I highlight her name and use the keyboard command + option + shift + ] the name appears reformatted in the index tab, but it only shows the current page the name is on and there’s no way I know of to get it to show all of the other pages. Is there some way to do this?

I think you are asking to reformat Mary Smith to Smith, Mary and locate all occurrences with the Add All button? Is that correct?

From the online help (emphasis mine):

For proper names that you want indexed by the last name, press Shift+Alt+Ctrl+] (Windows) or Shift+Option+Command+] (Mac OS).

An index marker using the default settings is added at the beginning of the selection or to the beginning of each item selected. 

Translation: this shortcut only indexes that single occurrence. 

Use copy/paste as the workaround:

1. Use your shortcut to index the first occurrence of Mary Smith as Smith, Mary.
2. Edit > Story Editor
3. Select and copy the index marker and the words Mary Smith to the clipboard
   
4. Edit > Find/Change
5. Find: Mary Smith
       Change: ^c
6. Change All, but make sure you don't get two markers in front of the first occurrence. If you do, just delete one in Story Editor.
7. Update the index.
   
   

^c is the metacharacter in a Text F/C for pasting the contents of the clipboard with formatting (remember, you copied the marker along with the words Mary Smith), so this is pasting the correct marker in front of all occurrences of Smith, Mary. 

Finally, I totally understand your frustration with InDesign's indexing. Lots of InDesign features have been improved over the years, but indexing has largely remained the same from the beginning and I agree that it could use some love.

~Barb

On to the second question, but I need clarification. 

First you said:

I see a list of each individual page the reference is on with a comma between each page number.

Then you just said:

In most cases I want the individual pages separated by commas

Isn't that what you said you are getting? Screenshots go along way and helping us understand a problem. 

~Barb

Hi @HeathenHarper:

Let's start with the italics. When you add an entry, add a delimiter around the text you want in italics. Following the other thread, I typed in <i> in front of Empire and </i> after before adding the reference. 

When you update the index, the codes will wrap around the word as you see below.

Now you want to italicize the content and hide the codes. Create two character styles: Emphasis: set to Italics and Hidden: set to type size 0.1pt and Color None. (There are other variations on Hidden but you can see how those settings look in the my final screen shot.) 

Create two GREP styles as shown below on Index Level 1 (or whatever level you are working on):

• Assign Emphasis to <i>.+?</i>
• Assign Hidden to </?i>
  

~Barb

Hi @HeathenHarper:

1. Italics in an index—add markers around the words that need to be italicized and set up a grep style to change them to italics. See https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/making-individual-words-italic-in-index/m-p/8778491. 

2. You don't want pages separated by commas and you don't want page ranges—what do you want?

As a general tip, be wary of using the Add All to add every occurrence of a word. For example:

Dogs, 2, 5, 15, 30, 31, 32, 55

Consider using subtopics:
Dogs

  Caring for, 2

  Feeding, 5, 15

  Lifespan, 30–32

  Washing, 55

~Barb