Index Page ranges

[Tom Benjey]

When I create an index for a Word 2007 document, I get entries like:

Washington, George 1,2,3,7,11

but I want:

Washington, George 1-3,7,11

What must I do to get page ranges instead of each individual page number
when the item is found on 3 or more successive pages?

Thanks,

Tom

 

[grammatim]

Either switch to FrameMaker ... or (this is how it works in 2003) when
you insert an Index marker, select the whole stretch of text that you
want to be indexed as a page range. (You can still insert individual
index markers within that stretch of marked text.)

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

In order to include a range, you must select the included text and bookmark
it, then include the bookmark in the XE field (in the Mark Index Entry
dialog, there is a place to select the bookmark).

 

[Tom Benjey]

Thank you for your assistance, grammatin and Suzanne.

I have a 160,000 word book I want to index that includes chapters or
sections on 50+ people. These people's names are the index entries most
likely to include sequential page references. Other index entriy types don't
exhibit this problem. I previously indexed a 60,000 word book using a
concordance and was pleased with the results. Manually marking each index
entry looks like it would be laborious to the extreme.

Is it possible to edit the index Word creates to affect the change?

FrameMaker can be downloaded for a 30-day free trial. Does it require all
this manual entry or can it use a concordance?

Tom

 

[grammatim]

FrameMaker has a pretty steep learning curve (but it's worth it) and
doesn't necessarily import every feature of a Word file as expected,
so if you ms. has complexities, you might not want to try it.

IF it comes in ok, with all the existing index markers intact, then
when you generate the index, it's a simple matter to have it condense
the consecutive page references in the index -- except that anything
to do with index formatting is hard to get at and you need to study
the manual. (And I've most recently been in FM 6 for Mac and 7.2 for
PC). Yes, FM actually comes with a manual! Hopefully the trial
download includes the pdf of it. The index controls are on the last of
the "Reference pages."

The one thing about Word indexes that's better than FM indexes is that
it will automatically index-mark every occurrence of a particular
word. That's useful for minor topics that occur in widely separated
places in the book.