I have written a three hundred page book in MS Word 2016, and used another software (TextSTAT-2) to analyze the file and create an alphabetical unique word list of 5000 words. I've gone through that word list of 5000 unique words and selected 400 words that I want in the index. So now I have a list of 400 words. Is there a way to add them into the index as a batch, rather than using the MS Word index GUI screen that makes you go to the actual page where the word occurs and add it by highlighting and marking it? I would rather opt to have all the words added at once as a batch, which will save a huge amount of time. The words could all be set as "mark all" occurrences, rather than specifying the occurrence on a particular page.

Word allows you to use a concordance document for the creation of Index entries, via References|Insert Index>Automark. You could add your list to such a document.

The Index concordance document is essentially a two-column table in which the texts to be indexed is in the first column and the form of the Index entries is in the second column. However, see: https://wordmvp.com/FAQs/Formatting/CreateIndex.htm

Once the entries are marked, see: https://support.office.com/en-us/art...2-cda9d14bf073

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Thanks! Your links were very helpful. And the Concordance Index approach is going to work really well for our needs. We do actually want all the occurrences for each word to appear in the index, and the Concordance Index approach provides for this as well as allowing us to batch enter the words.

I am very disappointed to find out on casual checking, that the page numbers in the index I've created are almost all wrong-- they do not match the actual page numbers on which the words occur. A few are correct, but almost all are off by 3-4 pages. How could this be? MS Word gives the user the freedom to assign page "1" wherever one likes. In my case I've used roman numerals up through the TOC, preface, and editors note. Page "1" starts with chapter one of the book. Couldn't MSW understand this? I put a lot of time to making this index, only to find out that the page numbers are wrong.

I haven't seen that problem.

Is your index at the end of the document (and therefore its size could alter the subsequent page numbers)? It would be good practice to put the index at the end of the doc.

Also, how are the pages numbered? The page number settings can be configured for each section so the page numbers are accurate but it is also possible to hack page numbers to display a number on the page which is not how Word considers the page number. Select a page number and reveal the field code to check what its options are.

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Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia

Ditto. The only way I can envisage such a problem occurring is if the document has fields that generate calculated page #s, in which case they'd be off for the TOC as well.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Sorry about the delayed reply-- I was checking for replies with great interest the night I posted this, and cannot understand how both of your replies did not appear as it seems you replied within just a few minutes of my post. Anyhow, let us move on-- I take great interest in what you've expressed here and very much need a solution.


My index is at the very end of the document, yes.


I used the MSW tool to install the page numbers in the footer. And in each chapter i.e. in each section, I opted to keep the footer continuing from the previous one. So as far as I know, everything was done properly as per the usual system. I did not 'hack' i.e. put any numbers which were out of order, or change any of the numbers. There may have been a few cases in which for some reason the page number did not appear automatically. In those cases I had to prompt the system by installing page number in the footer. Once I did that though, the program gave the proper number i.e. the number which was supposed to appear next in the sequence. I had joined together two large documents at one point -- one being the chapters of part one, and the other being the chapters of part 2. Once they were joined, I installed the footer in the initial
chapter of part 2, and requested the page number to continue as per sequence from the prior section. Everything happened smoothly, and no hacking was done.

I tried right clicking on the page number but did not get any option for field code. Please let me know how to reveal the field code to check what its options are.

As far as I know I did not create any fields that generate calculated page #s. I wouldn't know how to create such fields! If I need to check for anything like this though, kindly let me know how to do so and I'll check it. But the TOC page numbers are correct -- I've just checked them.

Anyhow I just made another index, and checked around 10 words. Now it seems to be consistently giving the correct page number for those very words which were wrong in the previous version. What I suspect may have happened is that the page numbers were correct when the index was made, but some further page formatting work may have happened in the time since the index was first made. Although I cannot say for certain, but it seems likely that this is what occurred. It still seems a bit odd, as the fine formatting which was going on could have accounted for a one-page-number difference, but not a difference of four pages as has occurred here. Anyhow I'll go ahead and remake the index now and be sure not to have any further page formatting go on after that.

I suspect that what you did was to change your document's page numbering for the front matter after creating the Index, in which case, all you needed to do was to refresh the Index via F9.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]