Office 2008 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual

Indexing

Although Microsoft may hate to admit it, even with its new Publishing Layout view, few people actually use Word to publish books. Most “real” books may be written in Word, but they’re usually then poured into a page-layout program like Quark XPress or InDesign for the rest of the process.

That doesn’t stop Microsoft from wishing its word processor were up to the challenge, though. As evidence, here’s Microsoft’s indexing feature, which can spew forth a professional-looking index for a document, complete with page numbers, subentries, and the works. (The operative word, however, is can; indexing involves considerable patience and tolerance on your part. As you’ll soon find out, indexing often involves a descent into Word’s sub-basement of field codes—a pseudo-programming language that’s not intended for casual experimentation.)

Phase 1: Create Index Entries

As smart as Word 2008 is, it can’t read your document and ascertain what the important topics are; you have to tell it which concepts you want indexed.

You do so by reading over each page of your document. Each time you come to an important point that you want included in the index, perform the following steps:

1. Select the word or phrase that you want to index.

   For instance, in a book about birds, you might want to create an index entry for eggs. So you’d highlight the word eggs in the manuscript.

2. Press Shift-Option-⌘-X.

   You could also choose Insert → “Index and Tables” → Index tab and then click Mark Entry in the dialog box—but ...