Indexing Summary

Subject: Indexing Summary
From: Damien Braniff <Damien_Braniff -at- PAC -dot- CO -dot- UK>
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 09:24:11 +0000

Thanks to all who replied to my query regarding indexing across multiple
Word docs - arose from a binder being created from lots of separate docs
(none had index).

The favoured solution seems to be to use the RD (Relative Document) field
in Word which allows you to reference documents you want to search when
compiling an index. The only thing you must be careful about is page
numbering (e.g. if you have a page 20 in more than one doc). Ideally give
the separate docs chapter/section page numbers - 3.1, 3.2 etc. Index
should then reference the correct page in the correct document. Special
thanks to Walter Hanig who sent me a copy of a paper he'd done which
provided more "how to" details.

On no account use the MS Master Doc feature!

Other solutions involved using separate software:

<<A while back I did a search on indexing and came up with a company that
sells a great package for indexing. You enter the data into a
spreadsheet looking table allowing up to four sub-topics, then it ports
the data into a Word created index. They even have a free evaluation
download so you can try it out. The company name is Sky Software (not
Blue Sky mind you).>>
<<Another relatively good TOC & Index generating tool is Sonar Bookends
2.0,
by Virginia Systems, Inc.
When creating a TOC, it looks for whatever style you assign. You do,
however, need to create and maintain a word list to generate an index. Nice
thing about that is you can maintain just one list for all of your unique
documents, and Bookends just lists the "hits."
At least on the Windows side, it works for QuarkXPress, FrameMaker,
PageMaker, WordPerfect, MS Works, MS Word, and Ami Pro. It's relatively
cheap ($100) and easy to use.>>

Damien Braniff
Technical Author
PAC International




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