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About this lesson
Create an Index organized by topic or keyword.
Exercise files
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Create an Index - Exercise.docx102.8 KB Create an Index - Exercise Solution.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
- In your document, select any word that you want to be referenced in the index.
- Click the References Ribbon, Index group.
- Click the Mark Entry button and make any adjustments necessary; generally, the default settings work well.
- 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.
Continue on through your document until all the relevant words are marked.
Create the Index
- Go to the bottom of your document and place your insertion point where you want the Index to appear.
- Click the References Ribbon, Index group.
- Click the Insert Index button
- Choose your preferred settings and click OK
- 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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