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Create an Index organized by topic or keyword.

Exercise files

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Create an Index - Exercise.docx
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Quick reference

Create an Index

Indexes are used to reference one word to multiple pages in a document.

When to use

An index is found at the end of a long document or manuscript and is organized by topic or keyword, generally by alphabet.

Instructions

Mark the Entries that will be used in the Index

  1. In your document, select any word that you want to be referenced in the index.
  2. Click the References Ribbon, Index group.
  3. Click the Mark Entry button and make any adjustments necessary; generally, the default settings work well.
  4. At the bottom, click Mark or Mark All.  Keep in mind, “Mark All” will find every instance of that word. This is a much better option than you having to find them manually.
  5. Continue on through your document until all the relevant words are marked.
Create the Index
  1. Go to the bottom of your document and place your insertion point where you want the Index to appear.
  2. Click the References Ribbon, Index group.
  3. Click the Insert Index button
  4. Choose your preferred settings and click OK

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  • 00:04 This exercise is how to create an index like in the back of a cookbook, and
  • 00:09 you want to find the word cake, and what page is the word cake on.
  • 00:13 That's what we're about to create.
  • 00:15 Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and click on this picture and delete it, so
  • 00:20 it's not on my screen.
  • 00:21 On the references ribbon on the right-hand side is an entire group called index.
  • 00:27 So, we're going to mark our index entries and the tooltip says Alt+Shift+X.
  • 00:32 And then, in the end, we'll insert an index again,
  • 00:35 much similar to the same table contents process where we can update it afterwards.
  • 00:40 The first process though, mark the entries.
  • 00:44 In this case, I've already turned the words red that I want to work with, so
  • 00:48 I'm going to double-click the word Video.
  • 00:50 Now you need to know when marking entries that uppercase and lowercase does matter.
  • 00:55 Okay, so I'm going to double click this word, and
  • 00:58 I can come up here and click Mark Entry or press Alt+Shift+X.
  • 01:03 And this box shows up with the main entry capitalized and
  • 01:08 red, it will show up in the final index as a red word.
  • 01:12 The other things we can do is set up cross references.
  • 01:18 Make it show up with the current page or a page range.
  • 01:22 We can make the number format bold or italicized.
  • 01:25 We can mark this one or mark them all, I prefer that one.
  • 01:28 I want to mark them all in the document so I don't have to go searching for them.
  • 01:32 So I'll go ahead and click this, and the screen will change just slightly.
  • 01:36 Notice, it put a code right on that very line and it left this box open,
  • 01:41 which is a huge convenience.
  • 01:43 I'm going to set it over here off to the left,
  • 01:46 so then I don't have to go up and hit Mark Entry every single time.
  • 01:50 Now I'll double-click the word lowercase video.
  • 01:52 Double click that one, come over to the left and
  • 01:57 just activate Mark Index Entry box and Mark All.
  • 02:01 I'll click the word Online.
  • 02:03 Now you might wonder, why isn't it marking the rest of them on the page?
  • 02:08 In a cookbook, if the word cake is on page three, but it's on that page five times,
  • 02:15 I don't need it to list it on my index five times on page three.
  • 02:20 It only going to find the first reference for that page and leave the rest alone.
  • 02:24 Let's move forward.
  • 02:26 We're going to insert a page break right here,
  • 02:28 Ctrl+Enter pushing this final paragraph off to a second page, so Ctrl+Enter.
  • 02:34 I'm going to come here and double-click the word picture,
  • 02:38 click on this one and Mark All.
  • 02:41 So if there was one on the previous page, it will now be marked.
  • 02:44 How about table?
  • 02:46 Double-click this one, Mark All.
  • 02:49 Now if any of those were marked on the second page, but they happen to reside on
  • 02:53 the first page, well, it got marked automatically because I hit the Mark All.
  • 02:57 All right, at this point I'm going to go ahead and finish this.
  • 03:06 Now notice in all of these codes, the words are also red,
  • 03:10 so they're about to turn red on the index itself.
  • 03:14 I'm going to close this box, double-click where I want the index list to land,
  • 03:20 and come up here to the index group, hit Insert Index.
  • 03:24 And as you can see, it's showing me what it's going to look like.
  • 03:30 I can decide if I want that to be multiple columns,
  • 03:33 two or three, I'll stay with two columns.
  • 03:36 I can choose it to be run-in,
  • 03:38 which means it's going to look like a paragraph layout or just indented.
  • 03:44 And I can choose the format I want, Classic, Fancy, Modern.
  • 03:50 I'll go with Classic, but I can change that at any point.
  • 03:54 Let's go ahead and hit OK and see if we like this.
  • 03:58 I don't think I like that at all,
  • 04:00 it showed up with the letter of the alphabet on the right-hand side.
  • 04:03 Let's go right back and change it.
  • 04:05 I'll go right back up to Insert Index, instead of Classic, how about Modern.
  • 04:13 Click OK.
  • 04:14 Replace this index, yes.
  • 04:16 Well, I like that, but I don't like all the red words.
  • 04:19 So let's select all of the text.
  • 04:21 I'm going to click and drag all of the text,
  • 04:24 I'm going to change the color on the home ribbon to black.
  • 04:28 I'm just going to come right down here to the References and update the index.
  • 04:34 It immediately changed the color for all of them.
  • 04:38 Now I'd like to turn off my codes because I don't want to finish this but
  • 04:42 leaving all my codes on.
  • 04:43 So we'll turn off the Show/Hide codes on your Quick Access toolbar.
  • 04:48 Now we can see on the Navigation Pane panel, we have our document in first page,
  • 04:53 document in second page, and then the index showing up right at the bottom.
  • 04:58 Generally, this will be on a completely separate page, so
  • 05:02 I'll click in front of it and hit Ctrl+Enter.
  • 05:05 All right, we are done.

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