The index in my Word document has duplicate entries

[STeveF48]

I'm trying to index a 243 page document.

I selected words that I would like to appear in the index, then presses Alt Shift X to create an index entry field, then Mark All to index every occurrence of that word, or phrase.

For Example Deal Castle, would be indexed as Castles:Deal.

The index contains lots of duplicate entries and page numbers. e.g.:

Castles

Camber, 52, 86

Deal, 16

Deal, 3

Deal, 58

Deal, 95

Deal, 96

Dover, 96

Sandgate, 52, 53, 54, 55

Sandown, 3, 4, 5, 7, 40, 46, 52, 53, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61, 62, 67, 70, 73, 75, 85, 86, 87, 93, 94, 95

The Three, 63

Walmer, 3, 5, 9, 15, 27, 53, 56, 58, 69, 70, 71, 74, 86, 92, 96

Castles

Walmer, 96

Castles

Walmer, 97

Castles

Deal, 97

Castles

Walmer, 100

Castles

Walmer, 100

Castles

Walmer, 101

Castles

Walmer, 101

Castles

Sandown, 102

How do I fix this so that each entry appears once on a page, grouped alphabetically, like a proper index?

Thanks in advance,

Steve

[#2]

BTW
I have contacted MS Support, but they couldn't help. Repaired Office 365 twice (local and online), recreated the index too many times to count

[#3]

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...

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

[#4]

Thanks for trying to help.

First, all of the entries were created by using "Mark All" when I inserted index marks, so there should not have been any variations.

Second: I had a problem, as detailed in my other post, with searching for hidden text. It was only on one PC, so On the other one I Searched/replaced all possible variations of XE “Castles:Deal”. I.e. Starting with a space, or ending with one.

Third, There are about 120 lines where the main entry is Castles and the sub-entry is Deal, that's 12 varieties of each letter in Castles:Deal.

Fourth: I don't know how to explain the sorting of the entries, I've copied them all into a plain text file.

Some entries are correct, which makes this so much weirder.

Thanks again

Steve