Invailid characters in index entries

[kyriosity]

I'm working with a very old book file (~20 years) to create a new file for reprinting, and I'm getting this error message: "The index could not be generated. One or more index entries contain invalid characters. Please delete any invalid characters from the index entries."

There are, of course, hundreds of index entries marked in the document, and I haven't the first clue how to start troubleshooting this problem. Any ideas?

[Mike Witherell]

Have you updated the font to be an OpenType font? That means editing the existing paragraph styles to also call for the new font. A 20 year old file might be calling for PostScript T1 font files and should be carefully prepped to update all fonts to OpenType. Then, see if the problem is still persisting?

[kyriosity]

Thanks. I checked, and it's OTF already.

[Jongware]

It's possible to write a Javascript that goes over each entry and deletes certain characters; I have done so in the past (every topic imported from Word ended with a '0' byte value). Can you give any more information on what the possibly "invalid character" might be? Accented characters? Symbols? Just about anything at all could help us help you.

[kyriosity · Accepted solution]

Sorry...just seeing this post. I honestly have no idea what could be hanging it up. But the good news is the publisher decided we could do without that index, so *poof!* mischief managed!

[Jongware]

Fair enough. Still: if you'd like to (positively) surprise your publisher, you could post a small test document somewhere on a public server (WeTransfer, DropBox) so that we can take a look at it and test whether it can be fixed in time for publishing.