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• • May 9, 2016 at 1:56 am #84664
    Elisabeth Straumoey

    Member

    Hello, when I generate an index InDesign adds a character style on every page number separator (be it commas, normal spaces, en space etc.).

    I would really like to separate the index level 1 entries from the page numbers with a character style (“index page number”), but InDesign formats all the separators with a different charachter style so that I get the formatting
    “index page number” “x character style” “index page number” etc.

    This means manually formatting every group of page numbers to get rid of the unwanted style and that is not an option.
    I have a “workaround” now by only using white space instead of commas, but hoping the client won’t want commas is hardly a solution.
    Please help! Thank you :)

  • May 9, 2016 at 6:56 am #84685
    Ari Singer

    Member

    Can you please upload a screenshot to Google Drive or imgur.com and post the link here?

  • May 9, 2016 at 10:14 pm #84723
    Elisabeth Straumoey

    Member

    Here is an image of a section of the index, with the index entry, page numbers and en space after the index entry correctly formatted, and the commas and spaces between the page numbers incorrectly formatted (too small and with the wrong font in this case):

    View post on imgur.com

    Thank you for having a look at this!

  • May 10, 2016 at 4:48 am #84727
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    I don’t think there is a way to assign a character style to the commas and spaces (the page number separator). When you choose one comma, for example, and look in the Character Styles panel, do you see that a character style has been applied?

    Or perhaps that is the “natural” size of the index paragraph style? Are you telling InDesign to assign a character style to the other parts of the index entry?

  • May 10, 2016 at 4:57 am #84728
    Elisabeth Straumoey

    Member

    Thank you for your reply. Yes, in the character styles the formatting is as follows:

    Index entry: character style “none” (correct)
    Space between index entry and first page number: character style “none” (correct)
    Page numbers: character style “index page number” (correct)
    Spaces and commas between page numbers: character style “tab” (incorrect – this style is used in the TOC)

    It has happened that another random character style than “tab” has been assigned to the spaces and commas but I haven’t been able to see a pattern in this.

    There are no nested styles or anything in play that I know of. And indeed I have not been able to find an option for assigning a style to the commas and spaces.

    This is a recurring problem for every index we make and a fix (other than my previously mentioned workaround using only spaces) would be much appreciated.

  • May 10, 2016 at 5:02 am #84730
    Elisabeth Straumoey

    Member

    Also, the paragraph style assigned to the index entry itself has nothing abnormal about it that I can see, 10 pt font with 12 pt leading, optical kerning and normal case + position – and no nested styles.

  • May 10, 2016 at 5:15 am #84733
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    No GREP Styles in the paragraph style?

    That seems very strange. Can you select the whole index and click None?

  • May 10, 2016 at 5:19 am #84734
    Elisabeth Straumoey

    Member

    No, no GREP style in the paragraph style either.

    Yes I can select the whole index and click NONE in the character style panel, but that doesn’t solve the problem since I need to format the page numbers with a character style.

  • May 10, 2016 at 5:30 am #84740
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    I don’t think I have a good answer for you.

    Make sure that there is None character style applied in the text frame before you create the index.
    Perhaps recreate the original template by exporting to IDML and then opening that IDML and then generate the index?

    Or, if it keeps happening, you may just have to apply a find/change to search for all that character style and set it to None (in the Find/Change dialog box).

  • May 10, 2016 at 5:35 am #84741
    Elisabeth Straumoey

    Member

    Solved, very happy! :D

    I deleted the text boxes containing the index, made sure character style was set to NONE and set the paragraph style to “index entry” in the new text box, regenerated the index and – ta-daa!

    I am so grateful, thank you! Have a great day!

  • September 7, 2018 at 11:08 pm #110296
    Gerald Donker

    Participant

    I have a related problem. I have created an ‘Invisible’ Character Style in order to get cross references with short form Fig. (See https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2428581#).
    However having created an Index for some reason each line in the index now concludes with the ‘Invisible’ Character style, including just before page numbers and cross refs. As a result the display of the index is incorrect. I can fix up by doing a character style format replacement back to ‘None’. But why is this happening? Not sure why the index is picking up the ‘Invisible’ Character style?

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