I used this years ago, but had forgotten all of the intricacies of using a concordance file. Nice refresher here. Learned more than I expected. Thanks for your expertise.
Great video - I have used Index before but never Concordance. I believe that is because there is now no User Manual for software, so features are hard to find - even harder if you don't know they exist. Your video solves that problem for me. Thanks.
Oh, man. I was struggling so much with how to include variations of the same word or concept (stereotypical, stereotypes, Stereotypes, etc.) under one entry (stereotype) and this tutorial just saved my sanity and my book. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
So... I guess that's why you are Two Rivers Software Training. This is a great way to demonstrate the quality you deliver, and let me tell you once again friend... it's exceptional quality. Thank you.
Hi Chip. I've just tested this with formatted and unformatted tables in both Excel and Word. It appears to work fine. Does your John Smith entry in the document have a { XE "Smith, John" } field immediately after it?
@JasonMorrell I ran into a problem that I wanted to pass along. When I tried to Insert the Concordance file into my Index page, I kept getting an error message that my document was still open in another application. It wasn't. I followed all kinds of tips from Google and reboots. Finally, it dawned on me that my One Drive may be the "other app". I quit One Drive for 2 hours. That was it! Then smooth sailing. If you already mentioned this in your tutorials, I missed it. Thanks again for you help. You saved me days!
Just finished this part two after watching part one a few minutes ago. VERY helpful. I have never used a concordance file and will put one together for a manuscript I am about to upload to KDP. This is invaluable. Thanks again, Jason! On to part three...
Jason, I left a comment on your first indexing video but I hadn’t yet seen your concordance video at that time. The concordance method is still largely manual (and doesn’t even have an option to switch forenames with surnames on selected entries for instance). Your videos are nevertheless excellent in showing how to use this extremely crude (and largely hidden) indexing feature. What isn’t mentioned (and I find quite extraordinary) is the fact that the word “Index” has to be MANUALLY added just before the place you create the index itself.
Hi Jason, MS-Word has been around for probably 40+ years and this is the first time I have been almost "forced" to use it. As a longstanding programmer it would be possible for me to write a (mostly) automatic indexing system literally within a day or two with access to the source text (of the user document, not the MS-Word code). I have found MS-Word quite "buggy" too, which shouldn't be the case after all this time. It won't even create a PDF if the .docx file is "too big" - but it doesn't even define what "too big" is. It just confirms to me how bad (crap as we say in the UK!) MS software actually is!
I trust you feel better getting that off your chest! We have quite a bit in common: 1. I'm from the UK (Canterbury) but 'escaped' to Aus in '98. 2. My background is in programming, but these days I only dabble. 3. We both know Word is buggy. Out of interest, what do you use instead of Word? And have you ever thought of writing that indexing code you mentioned and selling it? There are lots of people who make good money from selling custom Word add-ons.
@@JasonMorrell, I started using Google Docs - which has the advantage of not losing any recent text editing and, in many ways, is far simpler than MS-Word. It won't however allow "big" files and I had to split the 250,000 word (and images) between two Google Docs documents, which meant two separate Contents lists and difficulty with "search/finds". Unfortunately it was also quite slow for large files. MS-Word solved this problem but introduced a new problem - exporting to a PDF with hyperlinks all still active - which then escalated to not being able to create a PDF from it because the file was"too big" (without any definition of what this meant!). I am personally committed to produce some programmed product within the next few months to solve this indexing "problem" - which should have literally been solved DECADES ago. Sometimes I despair of the quality of current "software engineers" to be able produce productive and easily useable software.
thanks for doing this! one of the best indexing videos! the auto mark is a nice option, however is there a way around auto marking without considering the reference list?
Warwick, apologies for the slow reply. Here is what you can do. 1. Select the entire document except the Reference List. 2. Add a bookmark on the Insert ribbon. No spaces allowed in the name. 3. Toggle your INDEX to show the field code then add \b "yourbookmarkname", This will only index the pages in your bookmarked range. 4. Refresh the index (F9 or right-click and update). Don’t forget to toggle out of field code view. I hope that does it for you.
Hi David. Indexing inherently involves telling Word what you want it to index. There has to be some human intervention. If Word had to guess, how does it determine what needs indexing and what doesn't. Perhaps AI will fill that gap in the future but for now, there is no way to avoid the manual grunt work. Sorry!
Thank you. Excellent instructional video. Creating a concordance file seems like it will be very time-consuming. What if I create a concordance file with a copy of the document that I want to index. Would that work?
Thank you Pamela. A concordance is a list of all the individual words and phrases that you want to match within the main document. If you provide the whole document as an entry, your index will only contain one entry! An index is only really useful for larger documents, so when you consider that you might have spent several weeks or months creating the document, investing another hour or so to create a concordance (or manually mark your entries) is a small commitment in comparison.
Good morning from Greece. Thank you Jason for your excellent video presentation. Can I use this concordance file to create a "current page" index for some words and a "cross-reference" index for some other words? Thank you.
Hi Lampros. Thank you for your kind words. Assuming that your cross reference entries are spread across your document, the best solution is to use the "f" switch, but it's a lot of work! First you need to go through all the XE entries in your document and inside the braces, add either \ "c" (for cross references) or \ "p" for pages. For example: { XE "Cross reference text" \ "c"} or { XE "Page number text" \ "p"}. Then, you create 2 separate indexes that look like this: { INDEX \f "c" } and { INDEX \f "p" } The "c" and "p" can be any single letters you like. I hope that helps. Let me know.
Can the concordance file be built in either Word or Excel? Lastly is the header needed as shown in the video or just two columns, the first row being words and their variations and the second being how you want the words indexed. Excellent video!
As far as I know, there is no way to do this directly with a concordance file. There is no perfect solution (yet - are you listening Microsoft?). You can do the bulk of your indexing with a concordance but for special cases like page ranges and cross-referencing, you need to do a second phase of manual intervention. Sorry to disappoint! For the benefit of other readers, here is how you create an index entry with a page range instead of a series of individual pages: 1. In the document, select the full range of text across each page in the range that you want to appear in the index (e.g all the text on pages 1-4). 2. On the *Insert* ribbon, click the *Bookmark* icon, type a valid name for the bookmark and click *Add*. 3. [Anywhere in the document] Press *Alt Shift X* to display the *Mark Index Entry* dialog. 4. Type a name for the index item. 5. Select the *Page Range* option and select your bookmark from the dropdown list. 6. Click *Mark*. You should see something like *{ XE "Index item" "Bookmark_Name" }*. 7. Generate or refresh your index. The index should show something like *Index item ............. 1-4*
Hi, Jason. Very informative series of 3 videos. I have a question about controlling the page numbering in the index. Page numbers in the footers include the chapter: { REF Ch6 \h}-{ PAGE \* MERGEFORMAT } Is there a way to embed the cross-referenced chapter number in the Index? Thanks for your help!
@@JasonMorrell Thanks, Jason, for your prompt reply. Maybe I'll try to fiddle around with some way to create a dynamic page number by concatenating the chapter number and the page number. What's interesting is that for the ToC that I built into the top of the document, I use a lower case Roman numeral page number format & then after a section break switch to Arabic numerals. The indexing function correctly show a lower case "i" when an indexed work appears in the ToC! So indexing "knows" what format it's looking at. Maybe I can embed the chapter number into the page format with a literal string? I'll let you know...
Thank you for this! Is there an easy way, once you have built and updated your index, to go to the index, find the page number you want for your index entry, and go to that page number? Hope that question makes sense; in other words: want to be able to look something up in the index, and then go directly to that page in the document.
Hi, I have a question. I'm building a concordance file (for names) in a book. I want to know if the concordance file allows you to ignore specific words, as well as add them. This would be very helpful with two people who have the same name, but at highly varying levels of frequency. For example, if I have two authors named, say, Michael Smith and John Smith, but the first is mentioned 10 times, while the other only once, I could simply mark the search term for the first one in the right column as Smith and add an exclusion for John Smith. As it is now, I have to go to each occurrence of the name and mark it separately based on words in its context. I have to do that because the names are hardly ever stated in full, except the the first time. They are usually mentioned only as last names only, e.g. "Smith says", "according to Smith", etc. I hope I managed to explain what the difficulty is.
Tarek, you're stuck between a rock and a hard place! Word needs something unique to mark. To answer your question, you cannot exclude, you can only include. You could leave the Smiths out of the concordance then mark once to create { XE "Smith" } followed by a copy and selective paste for each correct Smith. But that becomes a nuisance to maintain down the track. Sorry I don't have a better solution. Jason
I am really grateful you explained this!!! I had already created an Index in my almost-400-page document. Is there any way to quickly copy and paste all those words into the concordance file or do I really need to type that up from scratch?
If you have already produced an index, copy the entire index and paste it into an Excel sheet. In Excel select the Data ribbon and choose Text to Columns. Delimit by comma. Copy the results back into a blank Word document. This will give you a 2-column table which you can adapt pretty easily into a concordance. I hope that helps.
thanks for the video. I don't want my table of contents to be included in the Automarking. Is there a way to have the marking from the concordance file only be applied to certain sections of the document.
Hi Lisa. Yes there is. You need to define an area starting from directly after your TOC through to the end of the document and bookmark it. Then you mark or Automark as usual. Finally, you tell your index to only index entries found within the bookmarked section. Here is the procedure step by step: 1. Mark the entries you want to include in your index using the Mark tool or a concordance, in the usual way. 2. Select the portion of the document you wish to include in the index (i.e. between the end of the TOC and the end of the document). 3. On the Insert ribbon, choose Bookmark (in the Links group). type a bookmark name (no spaces allowed) and click Add . Close the dialog. 4. Go to the place where you want to place your index. Create the index (on the References ribbon). 5. If necessary, right-click the index and choose Toggle Field Codes. You will see something like { INDEX \e ...........} . 6. Place the cursor after the word INDEX, add a space and type \b "yourbookmarkname" (from step 3). Word will then only index the area identified by the bookmark. Obviously, change yourbookmarkname to the bookmark name you entered in step 3. 7. Right-click on the INDEX field again and choose Update Field and toggle if necessary.. I hope that helps. Let me know how you go. Jason
Thank you so much for your video. I created concordance table including English and Thai language. It didn't work with my Thai language. Do you have any suggestions?
hi, I found this particularly useful as I'm doing a university course and though we have not as yet been asked for index's, I wanted to learn. Do you know if I Can obtain a concordance file already compiled for my engineering subject that I could, add too and initially run against my completed document to save me hours of work.
Word does not provide that functionality. It simply collects all instances of what you tell it to collect and lists them with page numbers. You may be able to do something with VBA. Try Upwork or RentaCoder.
Another question: If I want a book title to appear in the index under the title as well as under the author's name, how do I create that multiple reference entry? This is a great video, but I don't know where to go for an even deeper dive.
Great information, but I'm stuck. I can follow your instructions for a concordance, but what about an index that includes items with a page range or cross-reference? Thanks!
Thanks for your answer. Here's another question to go along with it: I'm building the concordance file- it's about 6 pages long so far - can I use it to build the index, then add individual index items (like those which require range or cross-reference) to it without messing up the existing index? Thanks again.@@JasonMorrell
Thank you for a very helpful series of videos. In the first video you show how to cross reference "Pocket Monsters" as "See Pokemon". Is there a way of doing this in the concordance file? I have tried something similar in the concordance file but the result is no entry for "Pocket Monsters" and an entry (under S) for "See Pokemon. The workaround I use is to leave out "Pocket Monsters" from the concordance, generate the automatique references, and then manually mark the (several) entries like "Pocket Monsters." The problem is that when (after editing the main document) I need to recreate the index, the list of "See ..." entries is not recorded anywhere and so some might be forgotten.
Hi Mike. Unfortunately, you cannot cross-reference items using the concordance method. There is plenty of merit in producing 95% of your index using a concordance and then the last 5% manually. All index entries remain marked, even if you recreate the index a number of times. When you manually mark an entry and cross-reference it to another, the XE code in the document retains that information. It will look something like: { XE "Index Item 1" \t "See Index Item 2" }. I hope that provides some answers and some comfort!
I feel this is great, and I appreciate the video, but there doesn't seem to be much here on how to actually create a successful concordance file. I tried to put a table with 2 columns on it and do as you said above but it doesn't work. Am I missing something?
There is nothing special about the concordance table. You just need 2 columns, one for the word or variation to pick up and one for the word to display. The concordance is saved as a separate file. Then in the main doc, you choose 'Automark' instead of 'Mark'.
@@JasonMorrell I had the same problem. Go to place you are inserting the INDEX. 1) References Tab>Insert Index. You will get a Pop-up Box called "Index". Click on "AutoMark." You will be directed to a File Explorer list. 2) Next to the blank "File Name" field, be sure to use the drop-down and select "All Word Documents." You should be able to see your concordance file. Click on it and proceed as the video instructs.
Hello. Great video. Thanks. Just a question: If I have in rows, for exemple: King Richard I King Richard II King Richard III In the index appears the three repeated kings. It's possible to restrict only a one in index? Thanks
Press Alt F9 so you can see the XE field codes in the document. Then edit the index entry text to "King Richard" for all of them. When you create (or update) the index, you will have one entry (King Richard) with references to all 3 Richards. Hope that helps. Let me know how you go.
@@JasonMorrell Hello, First of all, I would like to give my respet for your response. It's help a lot, but it's take to long. It's work very fine if I have between 10 pages to 50 pages. But, this is my phd in Medieval Studies thesis with 900 pages. As you can imagine, I talk/write a several times in Kings, like, for example, John I and John II, etc. Let's example with this pathetic phrase on page 114: "Once upon a time there was a King II of Portugal, and it's was a great guy,etc, etc..." In Index, show me like this K King I of Portugal..........5 King II of Portugal........5 Conclusion, it's show me "King I ...." and "King II....". King I of Portugal doesen't have to show on Index, because I don't use them. Can you help me. Let me tell you, for now I use you reply tip... but it's take, like I said, toooo long. Best regards, Vitor Pinto
It's unclear what you are actually asking or what you are trying to achieve, but let me take my best guess! Scenario 1: You don’t want King I of Portugal to appear in the index. Solution: Remove King I of Portugal from the concordance. Scenario 2: You want occurrences of King I, King II and King III of Portugal to appear as one unified entry in the index.. Solution: Create 3 rows in your concordance as follows: King I of Portugal Kings of Portugal King II of Portugal Kings of Portugal King III of Portugal Kings of Portugal If you need to remove your existing XE field codes do a Find and Replace. Find ^d XE and leave the Replace box empty. Replace All. Then do a fresh Automark and regenerate/update the index.
Cross referencing and indexing are two separate features. You cannot create a cross reference to an index other than using the 'See' option in the standard Index dialog. The cross referencing feature is for document text only. the process is to position the cursor or select some text, add a bookmark, then cross reference the bookmark. Both options are on the Insert ribbon. I hope that make sense.
Hi, I don’t know if you’re still checking this video, but I have a question. I created my two-column document and went to insert the table into my index area. I went to the automark and clicked that. I selected my concordance file and clicked that. And I keep getting the message “no index entries are marked.” Why? What am I doing wrong? Also, I got it to work once but one of the entries in the first column didn’t take the second column. Meaning I had just the last name in the first column and I wanted it to index under a first and last name structure as indicated in the second column. But it did not index that way. It indexed it as just the first name. Can you explain that as well? Thanks!
Hello Jason! I have a question. I did everything that you taught in that vid with my own book, but I have a lot of words in the text that have different fonts, colors, sizes, etc.. So I did my concordance file withe every single word that I want to appear in my index (every word are written in a same font in the table) , BUT some of those words that are in the BOOK have differente colors or fonts so the index doesn't consider them or recognize them. How do I make them show up in the index?
Hi Silvia. It shouldn't make any difference what fonts or formatting you have in your main document,. Nor for that matter does it matter what font or formatting you use in your concordance. I have just tested with bold, italic, colour, font size and font, including standard and imported fonts. Everything gets indexed correctly. Here are some things to be aware of and/or check: 1. In the left side of your concordance table, be very specific with your choice of capitalisation (button vs Button) and single/plurals (button vs buttons). If you want Button, button, Buttons and buttons to appear under one index entry "Button" then you must create a row in the concordance for each. 4 different words on the left. One common word on the right. If your concordance only has a row for "button" then "buttons" in the main document will not be indexed. 2. Only the first occurrence of an indexed word is marked in each paragraph. Therefore, if "button" appears twice, only the first will show an XE field. And realistically, the final index only require one entry per PAGE anyway. Let me know if that casts any light on it. Jason
As far as I can tell, Word on Windows brings the original formatting into the index but Word for Mac does not. I've checked out the switches and options for the Index and XE fields but there is nothing that controls the formatting. Just another Microsoft inconsistency! I would suggest that a uniform-looking index is best anyway!
@@JasonMorrell Hello Jason, thank you very much for your help. It worked! Amazing. Now I'm going to work on another index. Thank you so much for you videos --they're great!
Hi. I used concordance file for the first time and it worked fine. When I updated concordance file with new entries, it kept telling me that 'the concordance file is being used by another application. Please close it and try again'. I tried another concordance file, closed and restarted MS word and even restarted my laptop, but all my effort went in vain. Do you have a solution? Best regards. A-Imam
That's not a common problem. Try locating the concordance file in your File Explorer or Finder and see if the filename appears a second time prefixed with '~'. This is a lock file which is created while you have the main file open. It's purpose is to stop other people opening and changing the file while you have it open. Normally, the lock file is automatically deleted when you you close the main file, but sometimes, for whatever reason, it doesn't. Close the main file if it is still open then delete the lock file if it is still there. That should rectify the situation. Other than that, I have no suggestions. All the best.
Click the Show/Hide icon on the Home ribbon, locate the XE field code on page 0 and remove it (including the braces and everything inside it). Then return to your index and press F9, or right-click and Refresh.
It's still true. You put the words you want to mark in the left column. You put the words you want to appear in the index in the right column. This allows you to be more creative. For example you could mark "Australian Stock Exchange" in the document (left column) but display "ASX" in the index (right column). Or you could mark "printing", "printer" and "prints" in the document (left column, separate rows) but display "Print" for all three in the index.
i BUILD THE CONCORDANCE FILE BUT WHEN INSERT THE INDEX IT IS PLACED AT THE START OF THE DOCUMENT NOT WHERE MY CURSER WAS PLACED UNDER THE HEADER iNDEX. i EVEN TRIED USING A SECTION BREAK TO ISOLATE THE PLACEMENT OF THE INDEX AND IT STILL WENT TO THE TOP OF THE DOCUMENT hELP
Hi James. I can't think of any reason why that would happen. If you're prepared to send the documents to support@officemastery.com I can take a quick look.
In a new document go to the Insert tab, choose Table then choose a 2 columns (any number of rows is fine). In the first column add the key words and phrases to be marked in the document including singular, plural, different word forms etc. In the second column type the keyword or phrase that will appear in the index. As per the video.
I hope you enjoy the video. Add your comments below. I read and respond to every one. Jason
👍
Great to watch before embarking on the task of indexing a large non fiction book. Thank you!
Glad to be of assistance.
Thank you for someone to finally cover what to do when you have a long document that can have hundreds of index entries.
Cheers Chris. I appreciate your appreciation!
I used this years ago, but had forgotten all of the intricacies of using a concordance file. Nice refresher here. Learned more than I expected. Thanks for your expertise.
Great to hear. Thank yoiu.
I have you on loop brother. Less clutter and less chance of mistakes. Peace ✌
Peace.
Thank you very much! This is going to make my life a lot easier.
Onwards and upwards!
Thank you again for another excellent video! So well organized, clear, and easy to understand.
Appreciate it. Thank you.
Great video - I have used Index before but never Concordance. I believe that is because there is now no User Manual for software, so features are hard to find - even harder if you don't know they exist. Your video solves that problem for me. Thanks.
That's cool Robin. Thanks for sharing your success.
Thank you for answering the question I was about to go searching for. The removal method saved me hours of work!
Yes, it's a life saver when you need to do a quick clean up. Thanks for dropping by.
Oh, man. I was struggling so much with how to include variations of the same word or concept (stereotypical, stereotypes, Stereotypes, etc.) under one entry (stereotype) and this tutorial just saved my sanity and my book. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Glad to help @amandamuller3762. You can check this one off your list.
So... I guess that's why you are Two Rivers Software Training. This is a great way to demonstrate the quality you deliver, and let me tell you once again friend... it's exceptional quality. Thank you.
Yep! Cheers Silky Tp.
Such a great video...and mind blowing how much better this will be for a long document. Thank you!
It's a great feeling when you discover a little gem , isn't it!
Really useful. Thanks. I included the tips in an internal document at my company.
Fantastic, spread the love!
thank you for making my life 10000 times easier
Thanks Jessica. I'm glad it helps. Really appreciate your comment.
Another great tutorial. Clear, concise and very informative...thank you!
Thank you Virtual Assistant . You're very welcome.
I just found your channel. This material is great! Thank you for your efforts.
Appreciate your feedback.
Wow! That's a great time saver, and does indeed give one more control. Thanks!
Cheers.
Thank you Jason. I wrote a 500 page book. You have just saved my life, or at least a very long day of it!
My pleasure Chip. Glad to help.
Hi Chip. I've just tested this with formatted and unformatted tables in both Excel and Word. It appears to work fine. Does your John Smith entry in the document have a { XE "Smith, John" } field immediately after it?
@JasonMorrell I ran into a problem that I wanted to pass along. When I tried to Insert the Concordance file into my Index page, I kept getting an error message that my document was still open in another application. It wasn't. I followed all kinds of tips from Google and reboots. Finally, it dawned on me that my One Drive may be the "other app". I quit One Drive for 2 hours. That was it! Then smooth sailing. If you already mentioned this in your tutorials, I missed it. Thanks again for you help. You saved me days!
Thanks. @@JasonMorrell I figured out the formatting!
I didn’t mention it in the videos but it has come up previously in the comments.
Just finished this part two after watching part one a few minutes ago. VERY helpful. I have never used a concordance file and will put one together for a manuscript I am about to upload to KDP. This is invaluable. Thanks again, Jason! On to part three...
Good stuff. Always good to implement ASAP!
Jason, I left a comment on your first indexing video but I hadn’t yet seen your concordance video at that time. The concordance method is still largely manual (and doesn’t even have an option to switch forenames with surnames on selected entries for instance). Your videos are nevertheless excellent in showing how to use this extremely crude (and largely hidden) indexing feature. What isn’t mentioned (and I find quite extraordinary) is the fact that the word “Index” has to be MANUALLY added just before the place you create the index itself.
Yep. As we say in Australia: "it is what it is" !
Hi Jason,
MS-Word has been around for probably 40+ years and this is the first time I have been almost "forced" to use it. As a longstanding programmer it would be possible for me to write a (mostly) automatic indexing system literally within a day or two with access to the source text (of the user document, not the MS-Word code). I have found MS-Word quite "buggy" too, which shouldn't be the case after all this time. It won't even create a PDF if the .docx file is "too big" - but it doesn't even define what "too big" is. It just confirms to me how bad (crap as we say in the UK!) MS software actually is!
I trust you feel better getting that off your chest!
We have quite a bit in common:
1. I'm from the UK (Canterbury) but 'escaped' to Aus in '98.
2. My background is in programming, but these days I only dabble.
3. We both know Word is buggy.
Out of interest, what do you use instead of Word? And have you ever thought of writing that indexing code you mentioned and selling it? There are lots of people who make good money from selling custom Word add-ons.
@@JasonMorrell,
I started using Google Docs - which has the advantage of not losing any recent text editing and, in many ways, is far simpler than MS-Word. It won't however allow "big" files and I had to split the 250,000 word (and images) between two Google Docs documents, which meant two separate Contents lists and difficulty with "search/finds".
Unfortunately it was also quite slow for large files. MS-Word solved this problem but introduced a new problem - exporting to a PDF with hyperlinks all still active - which then escalated to not being able to create a PDF from it because the file was"too big" (without any definition of what this meant!).
I am personally committed to produce some programmed product within the next few months to solve this indexing "problem" - which should have literally been solved DECADES ago. Sometimes I despair of the quality of current "software engineers" to be able produce productive and easily useable software.
Very nice and informative presentation
Thank you for your kind words.
Great video. You;re very thorough. I miss cross-referencing in concordance style.
Thanks Anika. Glad you liked it.
thanks for doing this! one of the best indexing videos!
the auto mark is a nice option, however is there a way around auto marking without considering the reference list?
Warwick, apologies for the slow reply. Here is what you can do.
1. Select the entire document except the Reference List.
2. Add a bookmark on the Insert ribbon. No spaces allowed in the name.
3. Toggle your INDEX to show the field code then add \b "yourbookmarkname", This will only index the pages in your bookmarked range.
4. Refresh the index (F9 or right-click and update). Don’t forget to toggle out of field code view.
I hope that does it for you.
Extremely helpful and informative! Do you know of a technique for indexing Bible references in the document apart from doing it manually? Thank you!
Hi David. Indexing inherently involves telling Word what you want it to index. There has to be some human intervention. If Word had to guess, how does it determine what needs indexing and what doesn't. Perhaps AI will fill that gap in the future but for now, there is no way to avoid the manual grunt work. Sorry!
Wow! SO HELPFUL!! Thank you so much for your help.
No worries Kathy. I'm glad you found it useful.
Thank you. Excellent instructional video. Creating a concordance file seems like it will be very time-consuming. What if I create a concordance file with a copy of the document that I want to index. Would that work?
Thank you Pamela. A concordance is a list of all the individual words and phrases that you want to match within the main document. If you provide the whole document as an entry, your index will only contain one entry!
An index is only really useful for larger documents, so when you consider that you might have spent several weeks or months creating the document, investing another hour or so to create a concordance (or manually mark your entries) is a small commitment in comparison.
Good morning from Greece. Thank you Jason for your excellent video presentation. Can I use this concordance file to create a "current page" index for some words and a "cross-reference" index for some other words? Thank you.
Hi Lampros. Thank you for your kind words. Assuming that your cross reference entries are spread across your document, the best solution is to use the "f" switch, but it's a lot of work!
First you need to go through all the XE entries in your document and inside the braces, add either \ "c" (for cross references) or \ "p" for pages. For example:
{ XE "Cross reference text" \ "c"} or
{ XE "Page number text" \ "p"}.
Then, you create 2 separate indexes that look like this:
{ INDEX \f "c" } and
{ INDEX \f "p" }
The "c" and "p" can be any single letters you like.
I hope that helps. Let me know.
Thanks for this educative video. How do you do cross-reference using this approach?
As far as I know, it can't be done. That's the only downside of using a concordance file instead of the standard mark-and-index approach.
Very useful. Thanks for posting!
No worries Robert. I'm glad it helped.
Beautifully done, well noted.
I appreciate your words Janet. Thank you.
Super clear and super helpful! Thank you!
I really appreciate your endorsement Brenda.
VERY helpful, thank you!
You're welcome @JosMorn1
Can the concordance file be built in either Word or Excel? Lastly is the header needed as shown in the video or just two columns, the first row being words and their variations and the second being how you want the words indexed. Excellent video!
Hi Merrill, try it and let me know! No header needed, just the two columns. Have fun.
Thank you for this nice presentation
You're welcome.
Excellent presentation. Thank you ! I'm just wondering how page ranges could be used with the concordance method Jason ?
As far as I know, there is no way to do this directly with a concordance file. There is no perfect solution (yet - are you listening Microsoft?). You can do the bulk of your indexing with a concordance but for special cases like page ranges and cross-referencing, you need to do a second phase of manual intervention. Sorry to disappoint!
For the benefit of other readers, here is how you create an index entry with a page range instead of a series of individual pages:
1. In the document, select the full range of text across each page in the range that you want to appear in the index (e.g all the text on pages 1-4).
2. On the *Insert* ribbon, click the *Bookmark* icon, type a valid name for the bookmark and click *Add*.
3. [Anywhere in the document] Press *Alt Shift X* to display the *Mark Index Entry* dialog.
4. Type a name for the index item.
5. Select the *Page Range* option and select your bookmark from the dropdown list.
6. Click *Mark*. You should see something like *{ XE "Index item"
"Bookmark_Name" }*.
7. Generate or refresh your index. The index should show something like *Index item ............. 1-4*
Beautiful.. great thanks
Most welcome 😊
Interesting, useful and clear.
Thank you Sara. I'm glad you found it useful. Have a fantastic day. Jason
Hi, Jason. Very informative series of 3 videos. I have a question about controlling the page numbering in the index. Page numbers in the footers include the chapter: { REF Ch6 \h}-{ PAGE \* MERGEFORMAT }
Is there a way to embed the cross-referenced chapter number in the Index?
Thanks for your help!
I don't believe that's possible. From memory I don't think footer content gets indexed either. The indexing feature is very limited.
@@JasonMorrell Thanks, Jason, for your prompt reply. Maybe I'll try to fiddle around with some way to create a dynamic page number by concatenating the chapter number and the page number. What's interesting is that for the ToC that I built into the top of the document, I use a lower case Roman numeral page number format & then after a section break switch to Arabic numerals. The indexing function correctly show a lower case "i" when an indexed work appears in the ToC! So indexing "knows" what format it's looking at. Maybe I can embed the chapter number into the page format with a literal string? I'll let you know...
Thank you for this! Is there an easy way, once you have built and updated your index, to go to the index, find the page number you want for your index entry, and go to that page number? Hope that question makes sense; in other words: want to be able to look something up in the index, and then go directly to that page in the document.
Index page numbers cannot be hyperlinked to jump directly to pages. However, you CAN link to pages from a Table of Contents.
Hi, I have a question. I'm building a concordance file (for names) in a book. I want to know if the concordance file allows you to ignore specific words, as well as add them. This would be very helpful with two people who have the same name, but at highly varying levels of frequency. For example, if I have two authors named, say, Michael Smith and John Smith, but the first is mentioned 10 times, while the other only once, I could simply mark the search term for the first one in the right column as Smith and add an exclusion for John Smith. As it is now, I have to go to each occurrence of the name and mark it separately based on words in its context. I have to do that because the names are hardly ever stated in full, except the the first time. They are usually mentioned only as last names only, e.g. "Smith says", "according to Smith", etc. I hope I managed to explain what the difficulty is.
Tarek, you're stuck between a rock and a hard place! Word needs something unique to mark. To answer your question, you cannot exclude, you can only include.
You could leave the Smiths out of the concordance then mark once to create { XE "Smith" } followed by a copy and selective paste for each correct Smith. But that becomes a nuisance to maintain down the track.
Sorry I don't have a better solution.
Jason
I am really grateful you explained this!!! I had already created an Index in my almost-400-page document. Is there any way to quickly copy and paste all those words into the concordance file or do I really need to type that up from scratch?
If you have already produced an index, copy the entire index and paste it into an Excel sheet. In Excel select the Data ribbon and choose Text to Columns. Delimit by comma. Copy the results back into a blank Word document. This will give you a 2-column table which you can adapt pretty easily into a concordance. I hope that helps.
@@JasonMorrell thank you so much! I will try it! 🙌
@@JasonMorrell your advice worked perfectly! Thank you for saving me hours of time and helping me create an index that looks good!
My pleasure. Onwards and upwards!
Thank you. I will try it!
Thanks Sylvia
thanks for the video. I don't want my table of contents to be included in the Automarking. Is there a way to have the marking from the concordance file only be applied to certain sections of the document.
Hi Lisa. Yes there is. You need to define an area starting from directly after your TOC through to the end of the document and bookmark it. Then you mark or Automark as usual. Finally, you tell your index to only index entries found within the bookmarked section.
Here is the procedure step by step:
1. Mark the entries you want to include in your index using the Mark tool or a concordance, in the usual way.
2. Select the portion of the document you wish to include in the index (i.e. between the end of the TOC and the end of the document).
3. On the Insert ribbon, choose Bookmark (in the Links group). type a bookmark name (no spaces allowed) and click Add . Close the dialog.
4. Go to the place where you want to place your index. Create the index (on the References ribbon).
5. If necessary, right-click the index and choose Toggle Field Codes. You will see something like { INDEX \e ...........} .
6. Place the cursor after the word INDEX, add a space and type \b "yourbookmarkname" (from step 3). Word will then only index the area identified by the bookmark. Obviously, change yourbookmarkname to the bookmark name you entered in step 3.
7. Right-click on the INDEX field again and choose Update Field and toggle if necessary..
I hope that helps. Let me know how you go.
Jason
Thank you so much for your video. I created concordance table including English and Thai language. It didn't work with my Thai language. Do you have any suggestions?
Nope - sorry!
@@JasonMorrell thank you. T T
hi, I found this particularly useful as I'm doing a university course and though we have not as yet been asked for index's, I wanted to learn.
Do you know if I Can obtain a concordance file already compiled for my engineering subject that I could, add too and initially run against my completed document to save me hours of work.
If you ask around your fellow students or lecturers, you may well find one. Good luck and all the best.
Hi Jason. How do you format names in the concordance file to read eg Morrell,Jason in index?
Word does not provide that functionality. It simply collects all instances of what you tell it to collect and lists them with page numbers. You may be able to do something with VBA. Try Upwork or RentaCoder.
Hi. Sorry, just found Part 3.!!
Okay, no problem. Enjoy
Another question: If I want a book title to appear in the index under the title as well as under the author's name, how do I create that multiple reference entry? This is a great video, but I don't know where to go for an even deeper dive.
Unfortunately this cannot be done. Each text item can only be marked once. It cannot be used in two separate subentries.
Great information, but I'm stuck. I can follow your instructions for a concordance, but what about an index that includes items with a page range or cross-reference? Thanks!
Page ranges and cross references can only be created by marking the entries in the standard way, not using a concordance. Sorry.
Thanks for your answer. Here's another question to go along with it: I'm building the concordance file- it's about 6 pages long so far - can I use it to build the index, then add individual index items (like those which require range or cross-reference) to it without messing up the existing index? Thanks again.@@JasonMorrell
Yes, but take a backup first!
👍@@JasonMorrell
Thank you for a very helpful series of videos. In the first video you show how to cross reference "Pocket Monsters" as "See Pokemon". Is there a way of doing this in the concordance file? I have tried something similar in the concordance file but the result is no entry for "Pocket Monsters" and an entry (under S) for "See Pokemon. The workaround I use is to leave out "Pocket Monsters" from the concordance, generate the automatique references, and then manually mark the (several) entries like "Pocket Monsters." The problem is that when (after editing the main document) I need to recreate the index, the list of "See ..." entries is not recorded anywhere and so some might be forgotten.
Hi Mike. Unfortunately, you cannot cross-reference items using the concordance method. There is plenty of merit in producing 95% of your index using a concordance and then the last 5% manually. All index entries remain marked, even if you recreate the index a number of times. When you manually mark an entry and cross-reference it to another, the XE code in the document retains that information. It will look something like: { XE "Index Item 1" \t "See Index Item 2" }. I hope that provides some answers and some comfort!
@@JasonMorrell Thanks Jason.
I feel this is great, and I appreciate the video, but there doesn't seem to be much here on how to actually create a successful concordance file. I tried to put a table with 2 columns on it and do as you said above but it doesn't work. Am I missing something?
There is nothing special about the concordance table. You just need 2 columns, one for the word or variation to pick up and one for the word to display. The concordance is saved as a separate file. Then in the main doc, you choose 'Automark' instead of 'Mark'.
@@JasonMorrell I had the same problem. Go to place you are inserting the INDEX. 1) References Tab>Insert Index. You will get a Pop-up Box called "Index". Click on "AutoMark." You will be directed to a File Explorer list. 2) Next to the blank "File Name" field, be sure to use the drop-down and select "All Word Documents." You should be able to see your concordance file. Click on it and proceed as the video instructs.
🤟
Hello. Great video. Thanks. Just a question: If I have in rows, for exemple:
King Richard I
King Richard II
King Richard III
In the index appears the three repeated kings. It's possible to restrict only a one in index?
Thanks
Press Alt F9 so you can see the XE field codes in the document. Then edit the index entry text to "King Richard" for all of them. When you create (or update) the index, you will have one entry (King Richard) with references to all 3 Richards.
Hope that helps. Let me know how you go.
@@JasonMorrell
Hello,
First of all, I would like to give my respet for your response. It's help a lot, but it's take to long.
It's work very fine if I have between 10 pages to 50 pages. But, this is my phd in Medieval Studies thesis with 900 pages. As you can imagine, I talk/write a several times in Kings, like, for example, John I and John II, etc.
Let's example with this pathetic phrase on page 114:
"Once upon a time there was a King II of Portugal, and it's was a great guy,etc, etc..."
In Index, show me like this
K
King I of Portugal..........5
King II of Portugal........5
Conclusion, it's show me "King I ...." and "King II....".
King I of Portugal doesen't have to show on Index, because I don't use them.
Can you help me. Let me tell you, for now I use you reply tip... but it's take, like I said, toooo long.
Best regards,
Vitor Pinto
It's unclear what you are actually asking or what you are trying to achieve, but let me take my best guess!
Scenario 1: You don’t want King I of Portugal to appear in the index.
Solution: Remove King I of Portugal from the concordance.
Scenario 2: You want occurrences of King I, King II and King III of Portugal to appear as one unified entry in the index..
Solution: Create 3 rows in your concordance as follows:
King I of Portugal Kings of Portugal
King II of Portugal Kings of Portugal
King III of Portugal Kings of Portugal
If you need to remove your existing XE field codes do a Find and Replace. Find ^d XE and leave the Replace box empty. Replace All.
Then do a fresh Automark and regenerate/update the index.
@@JasonMorrellThank you very much, I'm going to choose scenario 2, as I think it's the right one.
Working with a concordance file is very useful, but what about cross referencing terms - how do I do that?
Cross referencing and indexing are two separate features. You cannot create a cross reference to an index other than using the 'See' option in the standard Index dialog. The cross referencing feature is for document text only. the process is to position the cursor or select some text, add a bookmark, then cross reference the bookmark. Both options are on the Insert ribbon. I hope that make sense.
Hi,
I don’t know if you’re still checking this video, but I have a question. I created my two-column document and went to insert the table into my index area. I went to the automark and clicked that. I selected my concordance file and clicked that. And I keep getting the message “no index entries are marked.”
Why? What am I doing wrong?
Also, I got it to work once but one of the entries in the first column didn’t take the second column. Meaning I had just the last name in the first column and I wanted it to index under a first and last name structure as indicated in the second column. But it did not index that way. It indexed it as just the first name. Can you explain that as well?
Thanks!
Nevermind. I figured it out. Thanks so much!!!!!
Fantastic. Great to hear.
Thanks sir
Thank you. All the best.
Hello Jason! I have a question. I did everything that you taught in that vid with my own book, but I have a lot of words in the text that have different fonts, colors, sizes, etc.. So I did my concordance file withe every single word that I want to appear in my index (every word are written in a same font in the table) , BUT some of those words that are in the BOOK have differente colors or fonts so the index doesn't consider them or recognize them. How do I make them show up in the index?
In the video three, you showed your index with different colors of the words just like in the original file. How did you do that? That's what I need.
Hi Silvia. It shouldn't make any difference what fonts or formatting you have in your main document,. Nor for that matter does it matter what font or formatting you use in your concordance. I have just tested with bold, italic, colour, font size and font, including standard and imported fonts. Everything gets indexed correctly. Here are some things to be aware of and/or check:
1. In the left side of your concordance table, be very specific with your choice of capitalisation (button vs Button) and single/plurals (button vs buttons). If you want Button, button, Buttons and buttons to appear under one index entry "Button" then you must create a row in the concordance for each. 4 different words on the left. One common word on the right. If your concordance only has a row for "button" then "buttons" in the main document will not be indexed.
2. Only the first occurrence of an indexed word is marked in each paragraph. Therefore, if "button" appears twice, only the first will show an XE field. And realistically, the final index only require one entry per PAGE anyway.
Let me know if that casts any light on it.
Jason
As far as I can tell, Word on Windows brings the original formatting into the index but Word for Mac does not. I've checked out the switches and options for the Index and XE fields but there is nothing that controls the formatting. Just another Microsoft inconsistency! I would suggest that a uniform-looking index is best anyway!
@@JasonMorrell Hello Jason, thank you very much for your help. It worked! Amazing. Now I'm going to work on another index. Thank you so much for you videos --they're great!
Great to hear! All the best moving forward
Hi. I used concordance file for the first time and it worked fine. When I updated concordance file with new entries, it kept telling me that 'the concordance file is being used by another application. Please close it and try again'. I tried another concordance file, closed and restarted MS word and even restarted my laptop, but all my effort went in vain. Do you have a solution?
Best regards.
A-Imam
That's not a common problem. Try locating the concordance file in your File Explorer or Finder and see if the filename appears a second time prefixed with '~'. This is a lock file which is created while you have the main file open. It's purpose is to stop other people opening and changing the file while you have it open. Normally, the lock file is automatically deleted when you you close the main file, but sometimes, for whatever reason, it doesn't. Close the main file if it is still open then delete the lock file if it is still there. That should rectify the situation.
Other than that, I have no suggestions. All the best.
@@JasonMorrell I really appreciate your effort. Unfortunately, it did not work. Thanks for your care and support.
Hello I have page 0 coming up in the index from an indexed word in the header. Can you tell me how to remove it? Many thanks
Click the Show/Hide icon on the Home ribbon, locate the XE field code on page 0 and remove it (including the braces and everything inside it). Then return to your index and press F9, or right-click and Refresh.
I thought I remembered that you could put the different words you want to index all in the left column. Is that not (or no longer) true?
It's still true. You put the words you want to mark in the left column. You put the words you want to appear in the index in the right column. This allows you to be more creative. For example you could mark "Australian Stock Exchange" in the document (left column) but display "ASX" in the index (right column). Or you could mark "printing", "printer" and "prints" in the document (left column, separate rows) but display "Print" for all three in the index.
@@JasonMorrell No, I meant all similar words in one CELL possibly sepertated by a comma or semicolon, to make it so much easier.
Cannot put comma separated entries into a single cell.
i BUILD THE CONCORDANCE FILE BUT WHEN INSERT THE INDEX IT IS PLACED AT THE START OF THE DOCUMENT NOT WHERE MY CURSER WAS PLACED UNDER THE HEADER iNDEX. i EVEN TRIED USING A SECTION BREAK TO ISOLATE THE PLACEMENT OF THE INDEX AND IT STILL WENT TO THE TOP OF THE DOCUMENT hELP
Hi James. I can't think of any reason why that would happen. If you're prepared to send the documents to support@officemastery.com I can take a quick look.
Hi. I could not locate your part 3!
ruclips.net/video/yhG5cZFu_no/видео.html
does a concordance file need a header row?
No.
@@JasonMorrell thanks
How do I create a concordance file?
In a new document go to the Insert tab, choose Table then choose a 2 columns (any number of rows is fine). In the first column add the key words and phrases to be marked in the document including singular, plural, different word forms etc. In the second column type the keyword or phrase that will appear in the index. As per the video.
Thanks for the question and the reply. I was wondering this too :)
Another super video. Thank you.
Cheers Joe.