Forum Discussion
The index in my Word document has duplicate entries
Hi STeveF48
Strange and frustrating, indeed.
I find a very old thread about something similar - but no real solution (beyond editing the INDEX field).
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/index-page-duplicates/1524677a-24bc-4304-9641-603d3967e249#:~:text=Word%20ordinarily%20does%20not%20duplicate,list%20the%20entry%20only%20once.
What I'd try is to make hidden characters visible (Ctrl+8)) and then find (Ctrl+F) through all XE entries to see if you see something strange. My first idea is trailing or leading spaces...
Kind regards
Hans
- Hello. This problem is happening to me too. The microsoft support agent could not fix it. Was there a fix in the end? Thank you!
In case anyone comes to this thread, I've also just had this issue, and it was caused by an extra space at the start between the punctuation and the term for one indexed entry, and it causes havoc for all entries thereafter.
So if it's the main term that is duplicating, you can search for: quotation marks-space-term (e.g. " Castles ), or if it's a subheading that's duplicating, then you can search for: colon-space-term (e.g. : Deal ), and when you get rid of the space and refresh your index, it'll go back to normal - thank goodness!
(Spaces at the end of the term before the punctuation also cause duplicate entries, but only for that individual instance - they don't seem to have the same knock on effect that spaces at the start do.)
It’s been a while since I posted my question. I think that I manually edited the document and made sure that each word/phrase in the index was absolutely identical.
If memory serves, there were hidden characters; spaces; tabs. Capitalisation also played a part “Index” is not the same as “index” and there isn’t (as far as I know) a way to tell word to ignore the difference, however you can fool Word by replacing words (ignoring case) with the same word plus the index entry code. Show all characters including hidden text will reveal these. I will post more when I am working on my PC.
Mark All is a very crude tool and likely to give you a barely useful index, if at all useful. IMO, there is really no good substitute for manually marking. It is almost never that the reader really wants to be able to find all instances of a term.
"But the end result is that you have every term indexed at EVERY place it occurs. Most of the mentions of a term in a book are simply passing references: what the reader wants to see in the index is only one page number; the one that contains the main topic for the term. If you send them on a wild goose chase to 20 other places first, they will think most unkindly of you." John McGhie How Do I Create an Index in Word?
