Indexing in Word for iMac

Copper Contributor

I have a 188 page manuscript filled with scientific names, always italicized. Index does NOT display italics. I've tried changing each entry, but when saved, they revert.  It was suggested by Chat help that Word doesn't recognize italics, which is not possible. 

I'm assuming I did something wrong, but after 4 days of phone calls and chats, nothing works.

Help.

 

And I tried to delete the index by using ^ d XE, but Find and Replace said ^ was not a recognized character, which means I can't even start over! 

More help! 

 

5 Replies

@ed1948 Select each level of the Index in Turn when after you have clicked on CTRL+SHIFT+S to display the Apply Styles dialog and you will see that the Style that is in effect is of the form Index #

Doug_Robbins_Word_MVP_0-1681502415380.png

If you click on the Modify button, it will open the Modify Style dialog for that Style and in that dialog, you can set the required formatting for that Style.

 

Note, while you cannot search for a particular type of field by using something like ^dXE, you can use just ^d to search for all fields in the document.

 

If you do want to delete all of the XE fields in the document, it would be best to use a macro containing the code

Sub DeleteIndexEntries()
Dim afield As Field
With ActiveDocument
    For Each afield In .Fields
        If afield.Type = wdFieldIndexEntry Then
            afield.Delete
        End If
    Next afield
End With
End Sub

@Doug_Robbins_Word_MVP 

 

I see the Styles can be modified, but can't understand how it helps. Common names are never italicized while scientific names must be. But some common and scientific names are primary entries, while some common and scientific names are subentries.  In other words, common and scientific names are, in some cases, both primary entry and subentry.  How do styles allow both entries, like these....

Algae (main topic, common name)

Amoeba ( main topic, scientific name)

It seems you're saying each entry must be a common name, each scientific name a subentry.
Okay. How do I then reverse that to build a new index of only scientific names?

maybe that's the easiest way...TWO indexes. Is that possible without re-XE-ing the entire manuscript?

@ed1948 What you might have to do is, when you have completed editing the document, select the Index and use Cmd+6 to unlink it from it sources and convert it to ordinary Text.  Then if you apply Italic formatting where required, it will not longer revert when the fields in the document are updated.

@Doug_Robbins_Word_MVP 

 

That sounds like the right solution! Since I decided to simplify and generate a scientific name only index,

which worked perfectly, now I can un-hook and do a subject index.   Thanks.

Is there a source book that explains all this, like the good old days when public could by those three

-inch thick manuals at Barnes and Noble? I keep running into problems Chat folks, help files don't help with. 

Ed