Editing an index

I am working on a document that is several hundred pages long, it contains first names with surnames which will have to be indexed. In the document the surname is last, in the index I need the surname to be first, I know I can change it as I manually index the names, however is it possible to edit the final index - I am thinking if I can edit the final document I could use a macro to do most of the work rather than doing each entry as I index.
Does this make sense?

On Fri, 15 Feb 2008 05:04:20 +0000, pamay
wrote:


I am working on a document that is several hundred pages long, it
contains first names with surnames which will have to be indexed. In
the document the surname is last, in the index I need the surname to be
first, I know I can change it as I manually index the names, however is
it possible to edit the final index - I am thinking if I can edit the
final document I could use a macro to do most of the work rather than
doing each entry as I index.
Does this make sense?

You can put the cursor in the index and press Ctrl+Shift+F9 to unlink the Index
field and turn its result into plain text. That can be edited in any way you
like.

I'll suggest that you unlink the index, copy the text to the clipboard, and
paste it into a new blank document. Immediately go back to the original document
and Undo (Ctrl+Z) to restore the Index field, and close that document. Make at
least one backup copy of the unchanged plain-text index. Do all your editing and
macro manipulations in the plain-text version; if something goes wrong, you can
throw it away and make a new copy from the backup. And if anything goes wrong
with the backup, you still have the original Index field that you can unlink
again. Only at the very end should you replace the Index field in the original
document with the edited version. Oh, and did I mention making a backup or two?

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit.

Originally Posted by Jay Freedman

On Fri, 15 Feb 2008 05:04:20 +0000, pamay
wrote:


I am working on a document that is several hundred pages long, it
contains first names with surnames which will have to be indexed. In
the document the surname is last, in the index I need the surname to be
first, I know I can change it as I manually index the names, however is
it possible to edit the final index - I am thinking if I can edit the
final document I could use a macro to do most of the work rather than
doing each entry as I index.
Does this make sense?

You can put the cursor in the index and press Ctrl+Shift+F9 to unlink the Index
field and turn its result into plain text. That can be edited in any way you
like.

I'll suggest that you unlink the index, copy the text to the clipboard, and
paste it into a new blank document. Immediately go back to the original document
and Undo (Ctrl+Z) to restore the Index field, and close that document. Make at
least one backup copy of the unchanged plain-text index. Do all your editing and
macro manipulations in the plain-text version; if something goes wrong, you can
throw it away and make a new copy from the backup. And if anything goes wrong
with the backup, you still have the original Index field that you can unlink
again. Only at the very end should you replace the Index field in the original
document with the edited version. Oh, and did I mention making a backup or two?

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all may benefit.

Thanks Jay for that solution, makes my job easier. All my work is backed up every night on a 2nd hard drive, I learnt a long time ago its the best way to avoid buckets of tears.
Cheers and thanks
Patricia

In article , pamay.1fc4df5
@officefrustration.com says...
Thanks Jay for that solution, makes my job easier. All my work is
backed up every night on a 2nd hard drive, I learnt a long time ago its
the best way to avoid buckets of tears.
Cheers and thanks
Patricia


And then it would be an easy matter to write or record a macro that
would put the last name first in each index entry:

John Q. Public

becomes

Public, John Q.

--
Peter Aitken
Author, MS Word for Medical and Technical Writers
www.tech-word.com