Creating Multiple Indexes in InDesign
Nicholas wrote:
How do you create multiple indexes in InDesign from the same book? For example, a subject index, an author index, etc.
I wish I could just tell you that there was an easy answer for this — just click the “multiple index” feature. But no. Instead, you have to rely on workarounds to get more than one index out of InDesign.
The easiest method (in my opinion) is to apply character styles to the words and phrases that you want indexed, and then use the IndexMatic script to create the index based on that style. It can do its magic on all documents in a book if you have all those documents open when you run the script.
Another method is to use prefixes in your index entries. For example, put an ! (exclamation point) at the beginning of all your “author” index entries. Then, when you generate the index, those will all be gathered together in one group. You can then remove the special character at the beginning of each paragraph easily with Find/Change.
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Technically, InDesign does not support multiple indexes, however, there is a workaround. When creating the page reference (Ctrl/Command+U), InDesign opens up a dialog box with eight empty boxes. The left side is the topic levels. The right side is where the sort options are. So for example you could have an index entry that says: “Smith, John”. But if on the right side you type “John” the index entry would be under J. So to do multiple indexes you could type in the first sort box the number of the index and all the entries for that index would be sorted together.
Thanks for the ideas. Since I work inhouse at a Christian publishing company in Latin America, we publish some books with hundreds, sometimes thousands of biblical references. I found the character styles idea to be quite helpful. The trick was to go through and apply the style to ALL the references. This was accomplished by writing a very, very long GREP search that was able to account for all the possible combinations of biblical citations. RegExr was a lifesaver when doing this. I’d be happy to share that GREP search with anyone who is interested. Perhaps someone can improve on it. Thanks again for the tip on how to do this indexing.
I would love to have that GREP search!
Hi, I’m a newbie at indexing, and was hoping you could clarify / elaborate on the steps needed to do multiple indexing?
I have 2 indexes I want to build:
1) Index by Author Name
2) Index by Author’s Country
Previously you mentioned …
“Another method is to use prefixes in your index entries. For example, put an ! (exclamation point) at the beginning of all your ?author? index entries. Then, when you generate the index, those will all be gathered together in one group. You can then remove the special character at the beginning of each paragraph easily with Find/Change.”
Please let me know if I have this correct:
1 – add “!” or other symbol n front of first index type (ie: author name) Do we place each name accordingly in the index (ie: !Smith, Bob – gets placed in the Index Panel under “S”)
2 – Then do we place all of the “!author names” onto a page in our InDesign file?
3 – (Assuming we do step 2), At this point do we go back into our document and do Find/Change? Will this screw up the index we just generated?
4 – THEN, how do we go about generating the second Index (Index by Author’s Country) – do we just repeat above steps and then delete the symbol after the index is generated again?
If this is correct, how do we repopulate each INDEX if someone gives us last minutes changes prior to print? (If the “!” symbols are removed)?
IS this a task to be done at the last hour? Or can both Indexes be generated and saved separately within the file and updated at whim?
Thanks kindly,
Jane
To keep alphabetically sorting in index just place “!” at the END of the index entry.
For example “author names!”. It fine works!
Jane, the method that requires putting special characters in the name is not really useful if there will be last-minute changes. It’s what we call a “kludge” and is hard to work with. The idea wasn’t to sort !Smith, Bob under “S” but rather just put it under “!” and then later remove the ! and the other parts of the index and just work in the alpha headings manually.
Again, the indexmatic script is easy, free, and is a great help when updating at the last minute.
Hello David,
I do what you see,I download IndexMatic,but I have one problem.
I want to generate index for those words that have a specific CharacterStyle
Works perfect but when I have for exemple
“Castel R”
in footnotes doesn’t work..if I want “Castel R” in index. (2 words in footnotes)
I selected Longest string,I apply characterSTyle to whole string,I selected include footnotes but doesn’t work.
can you please help me?
Thanks a lot!
David, thanks for the script link, but it appears to be for CS2 & CS3 on a PC, unfortunately I have a CS4 and a mac. Just gives me an error message.
If I can get around “last minute changes” .. would your “!” suggestion still be useful for my case – to generate 2 diff indexes? If so – are there any clarification steps / words of advice I should keep in mind?
Thank you so much,
Jane
Dear Mr. Blatner,
I wish to buy your IndexBrutal but first please let me know if that plug-in supports Chinese or Kanji characters.
@Vee David: I’m sorry, but we don’t develop this add-on; I was just writing about it. You’ll need to get a copy to try >here at Indiscripts (and you can ask them if you have any trouble with it)
any one can help me ? i am designing the book which has got 2 index at the end one is generic index which consists of Generic Drug i did that by ID but i want to make one more index for Trade name both are different pages in a sigle book .do i able to put Brand name index And Generic name index ?
@kcsudeep: Please read the blog post at the top of this page.
sir thanks for your reply but wot i wanna ask you is that the above process is bit complicated so can i create auto index n make the index page and again can i del all the index and again make new index for another is that possible ?
one problem i got now is i have a text in the page but i cannot see those how can i reappear those txt back ?
thank you for your help
@kcsudeep: I suggest you start a new thread on the Forums (click above). But the quick version is: Indexes are not easy in InDesign, and doing more than one index is especially a pain, unless you use an add-on.
thank you sir !!for your valuable suggestion and plz if there will be multiple indexing then plz hope to get in inbox :)
CAN I MAKE MULTIPLE DROP CAP IN SAME DOCUMENT ?
@kcsudeep: Please use the forums (click Forums above; you will need a free membership to post there) to ask questions of the InDesignSecrets community!
I just downloaded they try version. I need to index a catalogue with thousands of products but some of the part number have a / in them. when I run it I get everything that appears before the /. Am I missing something or is that not possible. I was so excited by the prospect. Please help
Hi renata,
Thanks for your interest in IndexMatic.
> I need to index a catalogue with thousands of products but some
> of the part number have a / in them. when I run it I get
> everything that appears before the /.
You probably need to use the “Single Query” mode. (In Automatic mode, IndexMatic only retrieves basic ‘words’ in the sense of alphabetic character sequences.)
So, let’s suppose your product references have the general format “any sequence of alphanumeric characters possibly including–but not beginning with–a slash.”
In IndexMatic’s dialect, your query becomes:
/[a-z0-9][a-z0-9\/]+/
(Note that the SLASH character must be BACKSLASH-escaped.)
so you may proceed as follows:
1) Run IndexMatic.
2) Select the Single Query mode.
3) Enter the query: /[a-z0-9][a-z0-9\/]+/
4) Build the index.
Now there are various tricks to make the query simpler. For example, you could select ASCII in the Alphabet panel, turn “Include digits” on, and then the \w metacharacter would mean any ASCII alphanumeric character, so your query simplifies to /\w[\w\/]+/
Also, if your product references are character-style delimited, it is even easier: select the target style and run the query /.+/
For a wealth of tips & tricks, please visit iX FAQ page:
https://www.indiscripts.com/post/2011/11/indexmatic-frequently-asked-questions
@+
Marc
It seems that the free indexmatic script (var SCRIPT_NAME = “IndexMatic”;var SCRIPT_VERSION = “1.02 (beta)”;)won’t pick up references in the footnotes. Even there is option to include footnotes it just does not work..or I don’t know how to use the script..Am I right? maybe you can help me,please.
Why Adobe do not update InDesign and add a multiple index function? I think it is very simple: add a number for every index entry, then the entries with number 1 are collected in Index2, with 2 in Index2,…
sorry: the entries with number 1 are collected in Index1, with 2 in Index2,…
Today, I developed a very simple method:
creat a root entry such as “all names”, add all namens in your book as secondary entries of it.
after creating index, you get as:
Index
A
all names
Clinton 2, 56, 197
Bush 66,743
Smith 45, 126
……
then delete “all names”, cut names and page numbers, paste them to a new page, it’s OK!
Exactly, you can just type a digital “1” , not “all names”, as the root entry for convenience.
J. Huang, Shanghai, China
In my opinion, the best way is to make copies of your book and index each book separately. Then, copy index entries from book 2, 3, etc. to book 1.
Only downside of the multiple book solution (which I have used) is that you then have to keep two books updated as changes are made — double the work. And for heavy revisions, its a LOT more work… I like the adding “!” to the beginning of each main entry for the 2nd index. Build index, cut and paste into 2nd index file, then s/r to remove the “!” — very clever solution and it maintains a single set of files.
Hi, I came here because I am looking for a method to do index of multiple volumes .. like Britanica encyclopedia itis about 30 volumes and a two dedicated volume just for index … how to do a book to index multimple books in indesign.
Indexing can be a challenge in InDesign, but it is very possible. It just takes a very long time. I have never seen an index that long in InDesign, though! That is a tough technical challenge. I think it would probably be far better to use a human indexer. Maybe talk to one of these people: https://creativepro.com/indexers/
The easiest way that I have found to do this is to just use Level 1 for the Different Indexes you want, Level 2 for the groups inside of the index then Level 3 for the item to be linked
Example
Lvl 1: Industry
Lvl 2: Fashion
Lvl 3: John Smith
Since the Index generates in a text frame just break the text frame to a new page or wherever in the document you want it to be so that it will separate properly.