Have Book Need Index

[Harrington]

I'm back with yet another problem. I have created a book in Publisher 2.6. Now it's time for the index and I swear I don't understand how to do this.(See attached Book panel.)  I've read the "manual", I've gone to Help, I've watch Elaine Giles video multiple times, etc. etc.

One thing I noticed about Giles' video is that the sample book she's using shows all the pages as one file. My "book" will only open one chapter at a time per window, if that makes sense. My page numbering is all correct and flows from one chapter to another. Now, each chapter is its own section as I want the <section name> from the Master pages to have the chapter number displayed. (See attached)

I really understand the premise behind creating the Index, but I know I'm doing something wrong and cannot figure out what the heck it is.

How do I get all my chapters to work as one so that I can create the index? Honestly, if I can get this one thing to work I can sleep at nights again!

[MikeTO]

Hi @Harrington it's not too hard to do this. Just add your index entries as you normally would except that you should never open a chapter document without having the Book open - otherwise the index topics won't sync.

When you're ready to generate the index, position the text cursor in the desired frame - it can be in its own chapter document or at the end of the last chapter, whatever you prefer. Again, the Book must be open. Insert the index as you normally would and Publisher will index the entire Book at once. Unlike the TOC feature, there is no scope option (because there's only one index per Book) so you can't control which chapter documents are indexed - it will just index everything.

You'll find detailed instructions in my free Publisher manual which you can download from this forum using the link in my signature below.

Cheers

[Harrington]

Okay Mike! I'm going to try this. It sounds much like what I have been trying: make and add a new chapter that is a .afpub file with master pages to match the rest of the book, insert cursor at first page, and tell it to insert index. I get nothing.

If this is a new file, how does it know what terms I want indexed? Where do the terms come from if this is so automatic?

I'm going to download the manual you have so kindly provided and hope to heaven something clicks for me with this issue. My next step is to go through all 300 pages manually and create the index that way.

I have, (in a previous attempt to get this book done) manually entered the 500+ terms the client wants to include in the index. That worked fine when I went to inset the index at the back of the document. Unfortunately, that document wasn't set up as a book, so the program used the absolute page numbers instead of the desired page numbers. Also wouldn't let me do any corrections to page numbers or enter new terms into previous list.

 

Thank you for the help. I'll pass the kindness along next chance I get!

[MikeTO]

I haven't tried it recently, but IIRC, if you're adding the index to a new chapter document, you might need to add the chapter to the book, close the chapter, and re-open it to get it to work.

It knows what terms you want indexed because it knows what you indexed in each chapter document. For example, if I index Apples in chapter 1 and Bananas in chapter 2 and insert the index in chapter 3, all 3 documents will have the Apples and Bananas index topics but only chapter 1 will have a reference for Apples and only chapter 2 will have a reference for Bananas. Publisher will keep all of these in sync as you work with your index.

If you index chapter 1 first and then start on chapter 2, you'll find chapter 2 already has a complete list of all of the topics you indexed in chapter 1 which is rather handy. The only limitation is that the Find in Document feature that finds words you want to index works only across the current document and not across the entire Book. This has been required by a few users.

Cheers

[Harrington]

Well Mike! Thank you so much for all the help. I am going to be treated for carpal tunnel syndrome before all this indexing is done, but the client will have a book with an index! All thanks to you and your brother advice-givers on this forum. I don't know where I would be if you all hadn't helped me.

One more question: How can I safely back up the book file? I thought I read that doing Save As with a new version number, like Pain in the Neck book v.6, would cause it to implode. I'm very nervous about not having multiple, timely, Save As's.

 

PS That Affinity Publisher 2.5 book you gave me (and 5,000 others) is a godsend. So cogently written, so good with explanations and examples.

[MikeTO]

You're welcome.

You can back up the Book file and Chapter documents as you normally would - I recommend keeping them all in a folder and simple backing up the folder. However, if you later need to open a backup, it is vital that you make the master copy of the chapter documents unavailable. For example, if the master copies are in a folder named My Book and you want to open My Book Copy/mybook.afbook, rename the My Book folder to something else before opening the book copy.

Publisher saves the path to chapter files as absolute paths in afbook files so if you don't do this, opening the book copy will open the master chapter documents, not the copies. If you rename the master folder to make them unavailable, Publisher won't be able to open them and modify the wrong files.

Good luck