Index Export Problem

Hi Matthew,

In a post a year ago, Lisa May identified identified the problem perfectly. And I have the simple solution for you and others who have fixed the missing anchors one at a time.

First, this is a only a problem when exporting a Reflowable EPUB. Indexes for Fixed Layout EPUBS have both ends of the page range as active links!

The solution is to use BBEdit or Text Wrangler to do a search and replace in the index.xhtml file using a GREP expression.

Here is the problem line in my book index.
<p class=”Index-Body”>abduction 132–137

Page 137 has an empty href=””.

Here is the GREP expression

Find: ([0-9]*)

Replace: \1

And here is the new line

<p class=”Index-Body”>abduction 132–137

The page range still has the 137, it still won’t be an active link, but it won’t throw an error in epub validation.

To show you how the Fixed Layout does not have this problem, here is the code generated by InDesign.

<p class=”Index-Body ParaOverride-1″><span id=”_idTextSpan130758″ class=”CharOverride-7″ style=”position:absolute;top:1146.24px;left:0px;letter-spacing:-0.23px;”>abduction </span>

<span id=”_idTextSpan130759″ class=”CharOverride-7″ style=“position:absolute;top:1146.24px;left:927.39px;”>132</span>

<span id=”_idTextSpan130760″ class=”CharOverride-7″ style=“position:absolute;top:1146.24px;left:1224.03px;”>–</span>
<span id=”_idTextSpan130761″ class=”CharOverride-7″ style=”position:absolute;top:1146.24px;left:1331.15px;”>137</span>

Both ends of the page range are active links in FXL EPUBS.

My index had 598 missing page anchors, all repaired in a few seconds.

Anne-Marie,

I have run Laura Brady’s two scripts and sadly they do not generate “real page numbers.”

I will therefore use the method I invented for my 2011 book.

But I am now working on a more general solution and will report this on your public pages.

I just tried to respond to a post on your “Page Anchor not found” page.

Page anchor not found

But it did not appear to change the page.

I have a general solution to the “Page Anchor not found” problem that does not require making hundreds of changes, as Lisa May and other in this thread did.

Here is what I tried unsuccessfully to post. Maybe you could post it, or help get my posting working on public pages? Thanks.

Lisa May,

You have identified the problem perfectly. And I have the simple solution for you and others who have fixed the missing anchors one at a time.

First, this is a only a problem when exporting a Reflowable EPUB. Indexes for Fixed Layout EPUBS have both ends of the page range as active links!

The solution is to use BBEdit or Text Wrangler to do a search and replace in the index.xhtml file using a GREP expression.

Here is the problem line in my book index (the link is to “abduction” in the chapter “induction”).

<p class=”Index-Body”>abduction 132–137

Page 137 has an empty href=”” which throws a validation error.

Here is the GREP expression

Find: ([0-9]*)

Replace: \1

And here is the new line

<p class=”Index-Body”>abduction 132–137

The page range still has the 137, it still won’t be an active link, but it won’t throw an error in epub validation.

To show you how the Fixed Layout does not have this problem, here is the code generated by InDesign.

<p class=”Index-Body ParaOverride-1″><span id=”_idTextSpan130758″ class=”CharOverride-7″ style=”position:absolute;top:1146.24px;left:0px;letter-spacing:-0.23px;”>abduction </span>

<span id=”_idTextSpan130759″ class=”CharOverride-7″ style=“position:absolute;top:1146.24px;left:927.39px;”>132</span>

<span id=”_idTextSpan130760″ class=”CharOverride-7″ style=“position:absolute;top:1146.24px;left:1224.03px;”>–</span>
<span id=”_idTextSpan130761″ class=”CharOverride-7″ style=”position:absolute;top:1146.24px;left:1331.15px;”>137</span>

Both ends of the page range are active links in FXL EPUBS.

Index links in FXL are not to specific tagged words, but to pages. So they just add the difference in the range (in this case 5 more pages).

My Flow index had 598 missing page anchors, all repaired in a few seconds.

I see the forum software cannot show the find GREP expression because it includes HTML.

Here is the find expression (using a trick to show th full HTML.

Find: ([0-9]*)

Hope this helps.

Ouch,

My trick did not work. And this forum software won’t let me insert a picture of the find expression.

So let’s try words.

The Find expression starts with the (a href=””) tag that is causing epub validation to throw an error.

This tag starts with a “less than” or left angle bracket (not the ordinary parenthesis above) and is followed by a “greater than.”

Then comes the ([0-9]*) that captures all the digits of the page number.

Finally we need the closing a tag which looks like (/a) except with angle brackets.

Again, I hope this helps.

I’m having this same problem with multiple index page entry ____ is missing errors. The two text editors you mention are for Mac only. I’m trying to do this search and replace with Sigil in Regex mode, but I’m not having any success. The only things it finds are entries with a 9 in them. Can you recommend a text editor for Windows that can perform this search and replace?

I am looking for help on this topic as well. NONE of my index links are exporting (1405 of them) when I export my book to ePub (reflowable). I tried exporting to ePub 3 and ePub 2.1 and the same problem occurred. “Index Page Entry Not Found: 1405” (and then lists each chapter separately). Anyone know why this happens?

When I export my InDesign file to ePub, most of my index links are functioning, but there are random few that are not clickable. I don’t see a pattern and cannot determine why this is. I will attempt the pasteboard export and see what that brings.

Thanks Matthew. I solved it with your pasteboard tip and from another thread including a hint from Lisa May.