Synopsis: Word Indexing Problem

["Mason, Catheryn" <CMason -at- INFINITEC-COM -dot- COM>]

Since so many of you have asked for a synopsis of the advice I received
about my Word indexing problem, I'll post this summary to the list.
Thanks to many of you for helping me out (among others, Debbie Figus,
Suzette Leeming, Suzette Seveny, Gay Reed, Peggy Schillinger, Jim
Aikens, Denise Fritch, Cheryl Dwyer, Jessica Lange, Dianna Massey, and
Walter Hanig).  The first solution, below, is the one that I tried, and
I've added in my experience. The other solutions I have not tried. This
post is a bit long but I've tried to give a lot of detail to help out
those of you who said that you were grappling with the same problem.

To refresh:
My question was how to generate an index for a document with multiple
sections, each of which is separately paginated (i.e., Section 1, pp.
1-30; Section 2, pp. 1-15; and so on). The sections are separated with
section breaks.  When I attempted to add the section number to the page
number in the footer, I received the following error message: "Start At
must be between 0 and 32766 for this format" (even though, of course, my
numbers were within that range).

Solutions that were offered:
(1) The most common piece of advice was to use the SEQ field to produce
the chapter/section number and also to produce the page number in the
footer. There is information about this procedure in Word's online Help
(search on SEQ) that is worth reading before you begin inserting fields.


I went to the section heading in my document, then selected Insert -->
Field --> Numbering --> Seq.  In the Seq box I typed in "section" (you
should type in "chapter" if using a chapter heading), then selected
Options --> Field Specific Switches --> \n --> Add to Field --> OK.
This \n switch inserts the next number in a sequence -- for example, if
you've numbered Section 1 with "Seq section \n," when you insert an Seq
field for Section 2 and select the \n switch the number assigned will be
2 (next in sequence after 1).  Then I went to my document footer and
repeated these steps EXCEPT I selected Field Specific Switch \c.  The \c
switch inserts the nearest preceding sequence number. To boil this down:

Insert --> Field --> Numbering --> Seq --> Options --> Field Specific
Switches --> /c (inserts nearest preceding sequence number) or /n
(inserts the next sequence number) --> Add to Field --> OK.  In the
footer, after this field, insert a dash or other separator, then select
Insert --> Field --> Numbering --> Page --> OK.

These actions will insert fields in your section heading and in your
footer, and the footer format will resemble "Page 3-1."

Warning!:
This method worked fine for me until I tried to include some customized
formatting in the fields -- for example, my Section 2 is subdivided into
Section 2-1: title and Section 2-2: title.  After trying various
options, I found a workaround; I substituted alphabetic for numeric in
the field, so I came out with Section 1, Section A, Section B, Section
3, Section 4, and Section 5. I did this by selecting Options --> General
Switches --> A,B,C. My Section 2-1 is now A, 2-2 is now B.  I was hoping
that once the index was generated, all I would have to do is type a "2"
before the A and B page numbers. (Unfortunately, now that I have marked
all of my index entries and generated the index, I find that the page
numbers have not come out in the correct format -- in fact, none of them
read 3-1 or 4-25, but only 1, 25, etc. This must be a problem with the
way that I instructed Word to index, so now I need to work on that
wrinkle. I plan to look in online Help under SEQ and then Index, as a
few of you suggested in your original posts.)

(2) Create a master index.

(3) Set up a style for each section heading. When you add the page
number, select Format --> Include chapter number. Each time Word
encounters this style, it increments the chapter number by one.

(4) Save each section in a separate file. Next to each index entry add
the hidden field "Alter_IMG {XE Alter_IMG}.  In the file with the index,
add the following field: {Index \s chapter \c 2}.  The result will be an
index with each index entry followed by the chapter and page number.
Consult online Help for explanations of switches to use with field
codes.

So, folks, that's the not-so-short summary of the advice that I
received. Good luck to those of you who said that you were faced with
the same dilemma.

Catheryn Mason
Technical Writer
Infinitec Communications, Inc.
cmason -at- infinitec-com -dot- com

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