Feature suggestions: reverse topics when indexing & consolidation of Topics

[Rabari]

Searched but didn't see this suggested before:

I do a lot of name indexing, so a command of "reverse topic indexing" would be great, where I highlight a First name Last name in the text, and the command indexes the name "reversed": Last name, First name with  a comma in between.  Would save me hours.

Speaking of name topics - often the names of persons (especially transliterated names) in a large book are written a bit differently, or people occasionally referred to their nicknames or maiden names. When indexing I don't always notice these connections, so they end up as separate topics, which are laborious to  consolidate. Wouldn't it be great if Publisher worked like this: if I give a topic the same topic name as another existing topic in the Index panel, Publisher consolidates the two topics to one topic.

[MikeTO]

I have to do the same "Last, First" switch all the time, too. A checkbox to the right of the field to do this would be nice.

There is no way to merge index topics in Publisher. To do it manually, drag each index reference from topic 1 to topic 2 in the panel - this is tedious if they aren't near to each other in the list - and then delete the empty topic. It would be a bit easier if the panel menu had a "Collapse All" command in the panel menu which would make the list somewhat shorter.

If the support is there, I will write my own indexing scripts when scripting is made available. The feature I want to add the most is to create multiple index references at the same time. I often have to add three index references simultaneously and it's mentally a bit easier to create them together.

[Rabari]

I didn't know about the dragging and dropping, thanks! If the topics happen to be similiar sounding and therefore  "nearby", it really saves time.