Reversing the Index Lay out

[Guest]

I have written a genealogy book and need to create an index. When I go in and
create the index it puts the entries in by first name and sorts them. I need
to reverse the Layout. Example: Thomas William Jefferson is how it is printed
in the book, but I need the index to sort by Jefferson, Thomas William. Is
there a way to do this?

 

[Jezebel]

The index is built from whatever text is within the XE fields. By default
this is the same as the text that you selected when you inserted the XE
entry. If you press Alt-F9 to display field codes you'll see { XE "Thomas
William Jefferson " }. You need to change this to { XE "Jefferson, Thomas
William" }.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Two principles here:

1. No matter how you create the index, you have to make sure that the XE
field contains the text you want to appear in the index. So if you select
"Thomas William Jefferson" and press Alt+Shift+X to create an index entry,
"Thomas William Jefferson" is what that index entry will say. If you want
"Jefferson, Thomas William," you must edit the text in the dialog to reflect
that. This will create an XE field that says { XE "Jefferson, Thomas
William" }.

2. If you have more than one Jefferson and want one entry for Jefferson and
subentries for Thomas William and the others, then you need to have just
"Jefferson" in the "Main entry" box and "Thomas William" in the "Subentry"
box. This will create an XE field that says { XE "Jefferson:Thomas
William" }.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

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