Creating Multiple Indexes in InDesign
When you need to make more than one index in a single document, you need to resort to workarounds.
Nicholas wrote:
How do you create multiple indexes in InDesign from the same book? For example, a subject index, an author index, etc.
I wish I could just tell you that there was an easy answer for this — just click the “multiple index” feature. But no. Instead, you have to rely on workarounds to get more than one index out of InDesign.
The easiest method (in my opinion) is to apply character styles to the words and phrases that you want indexed, and then use the IndexMatic script to create the index based on that style. It can do its magic on all documents in a book if you have all those documents open when you run the script.
Another method is to use prefixes in your index entries. For example, put an ! (exclamation point) at the beginning of all your “author” index entries. Then, when you generate the index, those will all be gathered together in one group. You can then remove the special character at the beginning of each paragraph easily with Find/Change.
This article was last modified on December 20, 2021
This article was first published on October 22, 2009
Commenting is easier and faster when you're logged in!
Recommended for you
Two Tips in One: Vertical Spreads and Shared Layouts
Robbi wrote, I was wondering if there is a way to have a group of objects in one...
Keeping the Same Scale Size when Updating or Relinking to Images
How to tell InDesign to stop scaling images when the dimensions change
Why Can’t I Get Dot Leaders to Line Up?
Sometimes there's a big space before a dot leader, and sometimes it's tiny. Why...
