Documentation

SAI Index Assistant

Create embedded indexes.

An upcoming release of Scribe Tools for InDesign will take advantage of the markup created by this tool to work with embedded indexes. Until that time, Scribe does not have a recommended procedure for working with or creating embedded indexes. If you are interested in learning more about embedded indexing, please consult with your Scribe contact.

Embedded Indexes

Embedded index terms use markup to indicate where the indexed material exists. Instead of indexing at the final stage, using embedded indexing allows you to index the book once and use the embedded markup to generate the final page index for different environments and designs. Character styles should be captured using XML-style markup.

Index Assistant

Entry: Add, edit, or modify the index term. Use colons to separate subentry levels. (If you need to type a colon as part of an entry, insert a backslash before the colon.)

Entries in document: List all unique index entries along with the number of instances. Double-clicking on an entry will cycle through the instances of the entry within the manuscript.

Set Term from Selection: The following features are used to help modify the Entry field.

  • Entry: Replace Entry field with the selected text in the document.
  • Subentry: Add selected text as a subentry to whatever is currently in the Entry field.
  • Entry/Subentry, Inverted: Same as the Entry and Subentry buttons, respectively, with the exception that if more than one word is selected, the last word is listed at the start of the entry, followed by a comma. Useful for quickly inverting names from the selected document.
  • Look Up Selected Text in Current Entries: If you encounter a term later on, selecting the term in the document and then clicking this will check if there is already an entry that starts with this text. This is particularly useful for things like names, where only the last name may be used in subsequent references.

Page Number Format: Choose to apply italic or bold to the page numbers. This is commonly used to differentiate entries located in figure captions or tables, which often receive special treatment in an index.

See reference: Add cross-references within an index by selecting this option and adding the “See” text to the document.

Once the entry text has been selected, you have three options of how to mark the index entry:

  • Mark: Inserts a single index marker that will travel through the workflow. Useful for brief references.
  • Mark Range: For ideas or topics that last throughout a chunk of text (likely to end up on more than one page). In addition to adding the embedded index entry, this will add a bookmark to the document with a name like “index_end_#.” The embedded index entry will include a reference to the index entry.
  • Add Cross-Reference: Adds a see reference. Though the cross-reference is added as a field within the Word document, the page where the embedded index entry appears will not show up in the index.

Remove Index Entries from Selected Text: Removes any index entry within the selected text in the document. It also removes any corresponding bookmarks that were created to help with index ranges.

Update Selected Entry Throughout Document: Replaces all instances of the highlighted item from “Entries in document” with the text under “Entry.”

Find in Document: Searches for and highlights the text of the selected entry in the document, whether or not it is part of an embedded index entry. (To find the index entries only, double-click on an index entry in the listbox.)

Highlight Selected Entry Range: If you’ve selected an index entry range in the document, clicking this button will highlight the entire range covered by the entry.

Highlight All Ranges: Highlights all spans and ranges of the term highlighted in the “Entries in document” list.