Index Help
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- This topic has 14 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 4 years, 9 months ago by
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I have a book that has 17 individual documents. I am trying to create an index. However it is not possible for me to have every document in the book open. Each individual document is quite large and causes my computer to crash or freeze if they are all open.
It was suggested to me that I index every document separately and then merge them all together using excel. However, this will not work because there is no way to make sure that the sub categories stay with the parent category and still sort them alphabetically. Or if there is, that far surpasses my excel skills.
Does any one know of a plug in that will only require me to have a single document in my book open at a time but still apply the index to all the documents in my book?
Or has anyone else run across this problem and has discovered a work around in InDesign? I can’t imagine in the entire world that i am the only one that has run across this issue.
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Hello
Sarah,
For my answer I am making the following assumptions:
1. all your individual documents were done with ID
2. they all use the same paragraph styles (same paragraph names) that you wish to index
3. they all were numbered using IDs numbering scheme (Layout > Numbering and Section Options)
If this is so then I suggest a simple trick:
1. Make a list of the number of pages of each document
2. Number the documents in the sequence in which you wish them to be for creating the index.
3. [this is the trick] Now go to (Layout > Numbering and Section Options) and change the initial number for each document. Say Doc 1 ends in number 23, then Doc2’s initial number will be 24; if it ends on page 35, the Doc 3 begins on page 36 and so on.
4. Now generate the indices for each INDIVIDUAL document.
5. Hand-merge the resulting indices in the sequence of the documents’ numbers.
Seems quite easy and not labor-intensive.
Good luck
Tom -
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Hello Dave,
My experience with ID’s Book handling is bad. I just finished DTP-ing two very large books (500 pages each – large format 8.5″ x 11.5″)
While using the Book panel my computer kept crushing during the indexing stage.
So I simply merged all chapters in one large file and indexed it all using the auto numbering. This worked fine.
But then I had to add some new chapters and it was at this stage that I conceived this trick. It allowed me to first index each individual chapter (using this trick) and then merge the new chapters with the big file. On the side I just updated the index pages merging the new chapters’ individual index files and the numbering of pages ended correct.
Since Sarah seems to have some similar problem I offered her a quick and dirty solution.
Take care
TomBTW, ID CS6 works poorly on a 64 bits platform. It used to work flawlessly on a XP, on Win 7 it is slow and crushes. Sometimes the inserting of an image can take minutes. True, I only have 4 gigs of RAM, but that shouldn’t be an obstacle. But it is. At least in my experience.
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Gentleman, thank you both for your help.
David – I do have both of those boxes checked, what i thought was my computer freezing actually just appears to be InDesign taking an incredibly long time to start moving and generating my index. I tried again this morning and waited patiently for 45 minutes while InDesign did its thing and viola! My index was created. As I’ve only indexed 3 sections of my catalog so far, I’m a little worried that the more info I put in the slower it will go, but i guess i will just have to cross that bridge when I come to it. Also, the fact that i can’t see my index topics from other documents is still annoying and i’m not sure why it is happening BUT, all that seems to entail to fix is a slight bit of editing to my index when it is created.
Tom,
Thank you for your work around. I actually have all my documents page numbered with in the book so your first 2 steps aren’t necessary but if the above doesn’t end up working and/or seriously does freeze my computer at least i will be able to generate an index per document and hand sort the way you described.Thanks again to the both of you for taking time out of your day to help me with my crisis:)
Regards – Sarah
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Always glad to help Sarah ;-)
Let me know if you used my suggestion and if it worked.
As I wrote to David, my experience with ID CS6 running on a Win 7 platform is not very good. I read in other forums that users claim the same, namely that the 32 bits version was running well in XP but not in a 64 bits environment. I hesitate to migrate to CC because it is not a proven solution yet.
All the best and good luck
Tom -
Tom,
I’m actually running CC2014 in 64 Bit on Windows 8.1. I have had absolutely no problems, save this index issue. Sometimes I think Windows and Adobe are in cahoots with eachother and things don’t work properly unless you have the most up-to-date every thing. Luckily for me my company just paid to upgrade our whole department to the latest and greatest. I certainly couldn’t afford to keep up with everything on my own:)
Best of luck! Sarah -
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So I need help again. I’m like 4 sections in to my index. I would like the numbers to appear like –> 2, 5, 18-24, 37. Currently they are appearing like –> 2, 5, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 37. Is there any way to do this now, after i have already started my index?
I, for the last time, went to Adobe live chat and waited for like 40 minutes for help, only leave in frustration of this guy not being able to even under stand what it was i wanted to do. They now want to call me, which honestly, i don’t think i have the patience for.
Any way, it appears there is a way to have that format if you do it when you are making a new index tag for a topic, however, since it didn’t occur to me that until about 3 weeks into this indexing nightmare that i had this problem, i am once again looking for a solution. can you tell this is my first index ever?
So, any suggestions or am i redoing 4 sections?
Thanks!
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So glad to have found this thread!
What none of you seemed to mention is that when running an index from the book, Indesign actually opens each file. I just wish I knew why it doesn’t open and then CLOSE them one at a time!I have the same problem with a catalog as Sarah did, except that waiting didn’t do the trick.
I need to generate a list of all item numbers in the catalog, with they page(s) they’re on.
I can generate separate indices, but I have duplicate items across the chapters, and I prefer that they get listed only once.I can sort them in excel, but I wouldn’t know how to merge duplicate listings.
Any help would be much appreciated.
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Am creating an index for a very long InDesign book (consisting of 100+) InDesign documents. After indexing the first few documents, I realized that I needed to take some of the documents out of the book. Of course this changed page numbers. Does this mean I need to re-index all the documents again? Or will this take care of itself when I eventually generate the index for the entire book? I don’t want to continue if I need to start over, and I don’t want to start over if it is not needed.
John
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