Index entry format not consistent

[Pete]

I've created an index for a 300+ page document, but the entries appear
inconsistently: some bold, some plain text, some small caps. The tagged
text is in several different formats, but the index entries often don't
seem to match the tagged text, and I'd like the index to be consistent
anyway.

I've tried reformatting all the index codes to a consistent font, size
and style, (using the find/replace function) but after I rebuild the
index, the formatting inconsistencies remain.

I know I can reformat the index as a final step before printing, but
I'd love to have Word solve the problem. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Pete

 

[Pete]

Forgot to mention I'm using Word X in OSX 10.3.7 on a Titanium Powerbook

 

[Rudy Kohut]

I haven't done this myself so only some suggestions which you may have
already tried out.

Have you tried to select different formats in the "Insert/Index and
Tables..." requester, "Index" tab and see what happens?

Have you checked the formatting of the index if you use the "From template"
format (click the "Modify..." button)?

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Pete:

The Index entries will be returned in the format of the style of the index
level. So: A level 1 index entry will have Index 1 style applied and take
that format. A level 2 index entry is formatted by your Index 2 style, and
so on.

You can override this in the XE tag by specifying a /i switch for italic of
/b for bold.

Changes you make to your Index-series styles will be ignored unless you
insert the Index with a format of "From Template". If you use the From
Template setting, you need to update the Index styles to your taste and
enable the "Add to Template" checkbox when you format each style.

Get back to us if you need more detail.

I've created an index for a 300+ page document, but the entries appear
inconsistently: some bold, some plain text, some small caps. The tagged
text is in several different formats, but the index entries often don't
seem to match the tagged text, and I'd like the index to be consistent
anyway.

I've tried reformatting all the index codes to a consistent font, size
and style, (using the find/replace function) but after I rebuild the
index, the formatting inconsistencies remain.

I know I can reformat the index as a final step before printing, but
I'd love to have Word solve the problem. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Pete

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Pete]

Thanks John and Rudy,

Rudy, I have tried all of those things with no luck. Good ideas, but
something else is going on here.

John, the format of index entries of the same index level have
different formatting. For example, some "index 1" level text is bold,
some is not. Occasionally an entry is in small caps. The tagged text,
from which I've created the index, is from various styles that I
defined, but there's no consistencey in the index. For example, two
index entries with the same index level from marked text with the same
style will appear differently, one bold, one plain.

I've tried every index format, including "from Template" with no luck.
When I format "from template", I edited the Index styles and made them
all plain text, but various forms still appear. Somewhere a bold style
is overriding the index styles, I think.

I'm going to try overriding the styles by inserting tags as you
suggested, but is there a switch tag for normal (non-bold, non-small
caps, etc) (is it /n)? I couldn't find it in the word help files...only
saw bold an italics.

As a side note, I'd like to insert the switch tag using find/replace
since I have so many index entries, but find/replace won't find the
bracket at the end of the XE field code. (I was trying to find every
occurrence of: " } which appears at the end of every index field
code). So, I've tried using a wildcard search: XE "*" which does find
the index entries. However, I can't figure out how to simply insert the
switch tag (ie /b ) without replacing the text indicated by the
wildcard charagter. For example, if I put: XE "*" /b in the replace
field, the replaced index entry now has an asterisk instead of the
original text. How do I get replace to leave that wildcard text alone?

Thanks for your help. Sorry there's so much, but I am learning _a lot_
about Word though these groups...

Pete

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Pete:

Do me a favour:

Go to one or two of the text paragraphs containing index tags that are
returning bad results.

Select the entire paragraph.

Choose Edit>Clear>Clear Formatting.

Recompile your index. Did anything change? I can't find anything
documented, but I have a hazy recollection that the Index generator passes
through direct formatting from the source of the tag if there is any. By
removing it, things should come right.

To use " in a wildcard, you need to use two of them: "" otherwise what you
have effectively done is quote the asterisk, causing it to behave as a
character instead of a wildcard.

The bracket at the end of a field is not a bracket: it's not even a
character. It's a displayed fiction that shows you where the field ends.
So you are correct, you cannot search on it.

Any index tag that does not have either /b or /I is held to be "Normal
formatting" (i.e. Takes its formatting from the Index style).

If you want to email me your document, I will take a look and see what is
going on for you. You need to put a password in the subject line to get an
attachment through my firewall: use "Ze^jjknfGwFeX"

Hope this helps

Thanks John and Rudy,

Rudy, I have tried all of those things with no luck. Good ideas, but
something else is going on here.

John, the format of index entries of the same index level have
different formatting. For example, some "index 1" level text is bold,
some is not. Occasionally an entry is in small caps. The tagged text,
from which I've created the index, is from various styles that I
defined, but there's no consistencey in the index. For example, two
index entries with the same index level from marked text with the same
style will appear differently, one bold, one plain.

I've tried every index format, including "from Template" with no luck.
When I format "from template", I edited the Index styles and made them
all plain text, but various forms still appear. Somewhere a bold style
is overriding the index styles, I think.

I'm going to try overriding the styles by inserting tags as you
suggested, but is there a switch tag for normal (non-bold, non-small
caps, etc) (is it /n)? I couldn't find it in the word help files...only
saw bold an italics.

As a side note, I'd like to insert the switch tag using find/replace
since I have so many index entries, but find/replace won't find the
bracket at the end of the XE field code. (I was trying to find every
occurrence of: " } which appears at the end of every index field
code). So, I've tried using a wildcard search: XE "*" which does find
the index entries. However, I can't figure out how to simply insert the
switch tag (ie /b ) without replacing the text indicated by the
wildcard charagter. For example, if I put: XE "*" /b in the replace
field, the replaced index entry now has an asterisk instead of the
original text. How do I get replace to leave that wildcard text alone?

Thanks for your help. Sorry there's so much, but I am learning _a lot_
about Word though these groups...

Pete

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Pete]

John,

Thanks for the tips and the offer to look at the file.

I tried your suggestion: clearing formatting and then reappling the
style. That fixed the problem when I recompiled the index, causing that
index entry to be plain text. Seems strange to me, though, because I'm
pretty sure that I just used styles to fomat the vast majority of the
headings that end up strange in the index. And I don't really want to
go through the whole 300 page document to clear and reapply
formatting...

And thank you again for offering to look at the file. I don't think
that's really necessary, though. Not only is it a huge file (about 8MB)
but I also think I'm just going to reformat the index as a final step
before I send the document to a printer.

You've been a big help.

Pete