Hello, I have a living document that is currently 90 pages, will probably grow to over 200 pages eventually. I want to tag certain "words" that begin with a prefix, followed by a number (which will not be in sequence).

Example, page 5 has word "PTP_RS_004", page 7 has word "PTP_RS_008", page 13 has word "PTP_RS_006", and so on.

I have hundreds of possible "PTP_RS_xxx" throughout this document, some are used more than once, some are skipped.

I would like to create an index to keep track of these tags, so that I know each one is covered, and I can easily identify which page it's on. It could either be at the end of this document, or in it's own doc, doesn't matter to me.

I tried fumbling my way through the "Insert Index" feature but could not get it done (I thought I did, but then realized a bunch were missing, couldn't figure out why).

Thanks!


J

Creating an index, via the References tab | Mark Entry, is a manual task, that is, you'd have to create each index entry separately.

What you can do is make use of a concordance as follows: Create a Word document with a two-column table. In the left cell, add the word you want Word to index, in the right cell, add the word you want in the index. Create a new row for each new item you want.

Then use the AutoMark button in the Index dialog box (References tab | Insert Index) to generate the index.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

Thank you for the response.

I'm sorry, can you elaborate? I am not understanding this. So, I created a new Word doc, created a new table with two columns. I put in the left column "PTP_RS_0001", and the next row (still left column) "PTP_RS_0002", etc..

What I want on the right column, is the page number(s) where the word on the left is found (if any). Isn't that how a concordance or index works?

Also, I don't see "AutoMark". All I see is "Mark Entry", "Insert Index", "Update Index".

Let's say that you have PTP_RS_004 on pages 5 and 27. Am I correct when I assume that you want PTP_RS_004 listed in an index followed by numbers 5 and 27?

In that case, you should enter PTP_RS_004 twice in the so-called concordance file (= any file that you save in Word format), which should contain a two-column table (and nothing else but that table) with PTP_RS_004 in the left cell of a row. Add a new row for each additional item you want to create in an index and add it as exemplified with PTP_RS_004. (Remember that the left column contains the items Word should search for when creating the index and the right column contains the corresponding index entries that you want to create.)

To create the index based on the concordance file, do the following: Open the document that should contain your index. Click References | Insert Index. In the dialog box, click AutoMark and locate the concordance file you created.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

Thanks for the clarity. Based on what you wrote, I don't know if a built-in solution exists. Part of the issue is, I don't know how many instances of each tag (could be 0, 1, 2, up to about 10) are in the document, that's kind of the point of what I'm trying to do, track how many and where of each instance. Sounds like I would have to create a macro to do what I want (probably not worth it).

Thanks for you time.

The fact that you don't know how many entries there are, wouldn't be a problem of course (as I'm sure you already know).

Would it be possible for you to make a note as each new entry is added, put it into the concordance file, and then create the index as soon as the editing of the document is completed?

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

You can count them with the use of Replace. It will give you the number of instances it replaces a word of phrase. But this would still just be per individual phrase or word, not a number of different ones.

Don't know if this would help but could add a sequential field (1 - 1000000) then copy the worksheet? Delete all other columns then do a sort on that field? You wouldn't get page numbers but you could find your entries pretty quickly. If you mean one worksheet that after pagination yields 200 pages I'd like to know how to reference those page numbers into the excel table.

gsteel: Please don't resurrect dormant threads. This one was last active two years ago. I hardly think it's still a burning issue for the OP. What is more, the topic concerns Word, not Excel.

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Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]