A few questions about formatting an Index in Publisher

[philipt18]

I'm generating an index for my 600+ page book for the first time, and have some questions about formatting the index.

1) Can I have first-level index items always capitalized at the beginning of the line? I see how I can format it to be small caps or similar, but there is no setting for First Cap that I can find.

2) Can the text of an index item have different formatting than the numbers? I'd like Index Item 1 to be semibold, but not the numbers. I can see that there is actually a Index Entry Page Number style, so would I just set that to regular text?

3) Is there a way to format index items so they're separated by semicolons instead of new lines? I wouldn't want this across the board, but in some cases where there are a lot of sub-items for a specific index item, I'd like to be able to do this to save space.

4) I'm seeing some weird things at the end of my index. Some entries are being duplicated at the very end. I think they're ones I've modified by accident and then fixed. They're duplicates. They show up in the index properly, and then again at the end. Very odd. Anyone seen something like this?

[MikeTO]

On 1/17/2024 at 4:42 PM, philipt18 said:

1) Can I have first-level index items always capitalized at the beginning of the line? I see how I can format it to be small caps or similar, but there is no setting for First Cap that I can find.

Sorry no, there is no ability to change the case of index entries similar to InDesign, and the sentence case vs. title case commands are not attributes so they can't be added to an index text style.

[EDIT: There is a workaround, see https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/197483-capitalize-first-character/&do=findComment&comment=1164994]

 

On 1/17/2024 at 4:42 PM, philipt18 said:

2) Can the text of an index item have different formatting than the numbers? I'd like Index Item 1 to be semibold, but not the numbers. I can see that there is actually a Index Entry Page Number style, so would I just set that to regular text?

Yes, the text styles are generated to let you do this. A level 1 index entry will use the Index Entry 1 paragraph style while its page number will also have the Index Entry Page Number character style applied to it.

On 1/17/2024 at 4:42 PM, philipt18 said:

3) Is there a way to format index items so they're separated by semicolons instead of new lines? I wouldn't want this across the board, but in some cases where there are a lot of sub-items for a specific index item, I'd like to be able to do this to save space.

 Yes, you can enter a semicolon followed by a space in the Between Items option. 

On 1/17/2024 at 4:42 PM, philipt18 said:

4) I'm seeing some weird things at the end of my index. Some entries are being duplicated at the very end. I think they're ones I've modified by accident and then fixed. They're duplicates. They show up in the index properly, and then again at the end. Very odd. Anyone seen something like this?

I've never heard of a problem like this but one common issue for newcomers to Publisher is there isn't a clear indication of the start and end of an index so sometimes users mess up and some index text becomes regular text. Try deleting it all and reinserting it. Until you're confident you might want to only insert the index into its own frame or frames rather than at the end of the story in the previous frames. That will avoid you ever messing up the index.

I've documented all the index functions in detail in the free manual I've shared for Publisher in this forum. You can download a PDF from the link in my signature.

Cheers

Edited January 22, 2024 by MikeTO
Added a workaround

[philipt18]

On 1/17/2024 at 9:48 PM, MikeTO said:

 Yes, you can enter a semicolon followed by a space in the Between Items option. 

 

Okay, but doesn't that then apply to the entire index? Is there a way to create a style with the Between Items option, so you can change it for specific items by changing the style?

[MikeTO]

55 minutes ago, philipt18 said:

Okay, but doesn't that then apply to the entire index? Is there a way to create a style with the Between Items option, so you can change it for specific items by changing the style?

I'm sorry, I misread your question, you wanted to add a semicolon between entries and I thought you meant between page numbers for a single entry.

No, there is no "Between Entries" option in Publisher and no way to automatically stack child entries. You'd have to manually remove the paragraph breaks.