Alternatives for InDesign Indexing
InDesign offers some rudimentary tools for building an index from your documents — primarily the Index panel. The the Index panel will likely leave you frustrated if you have to make anything but the most basic index. If you find yourself in that camp, clutching a bottle of “Acetaminophen (see also paracetamol)”, then check out these alternative tools:
[[Editor’s note: See updated links at the bottom of this list]]
- IndexMatic 2: This script from Marc Autret does all kinds of great things that InDesign’s own indexing feature can’t, such as build an index based on character styles you’ve applied to text, or build an index based on a list of words you supply. IndexMatic 2 was reviewed in InDesign Magazine, issue 46. This version replaces Marc’s older Index Brutal and IndexMatic scripts, which were free but are no longer fully updated/supported.
- Index Topics List: This script was created by Peter Kahrel. Using the entries in a word list, the script adds topics and page references to all open InDesign documents.
- QuickIndex: The folks at Kerntiff have come up with a wide array of plug-ins to help indexers. Many of these were reviewed in InDesign Magazine issue 65.
- SmartyIndex: Here’s a simple free script from Vlad Vladila at Typefi which can build an index based on a list of words you give it.
- SonarBookends: Also, the SonarBookends InDex plug-in from Virginia Systems has many powerful features for building indexes.
New items, September 2023:
- IndexMatic 3: a review in CreativePro Magazine from Jeff Potter
- Index and Concordance scripts from Peter Kahrel can be found here
- Keep Script: Need to keep lines together in an index? See this script.
- InDexers: Want to find a human, professional indexer?! Check this list!
Do you know any other plug-ins and scripts you’d recommend for indexing in InDesign? Share them below!
Other articles about indexing include:
- Sort an Index by Page Number
- Formatting in InDesign Index Entries
- How to Remove All the Index Entries
- Parentheses around page numbers in the Index panel
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My solution is to hope that Adobe finally gives InDesign users their very own iOS/Android apps. Rather than being a preliminary creation tool like other Adobe iOS apps, I’m hoping it’s task centered, doing well certain common tasks that are slow and clumsy with ID’s own panels.
For indexing, that app would include a screen that displays an already large (iPad-sized) view of the index entries that are in the Index panel. Quite a few would be displayed and the others could be easily found with a flick of a finger. No more klutzing with that tiny index panel window.
Having set the cursor in the text where the entry should be, a single iPad tap on an entry would place it in the text while a double-tap would bring up a screen to modify it in the usual ways.
That’d cut in half or less the time it takes to apply indexing to a book. It’d be particularly great for books where the indexing isn’t just a cut-and-dried listing of all mention of certain words.
You can also used Peter Kahrel nice script to create index topics from character styles. And if your entry are formatted with paragraph styles, you can just add a GREP Style to all text in that style to make the script works also for paragraphs styles.
https://www.kahrel.plus.com/indesign/index_charstyles.html
If you’ve got an Index prepared by a professional indexer, and you want to convert the page numbers in the index to interactive hyperlinks (for exporting to PDF or even ePUB) there’s out LiveIndex script: https://www.id-extras.com/products/liveindex (as recommended by Sandee Cohen)
Will these products work with InDesign CC 2014. I am particularly interestes in IndexMatic 2
Jonathan, there is a trial version of IndexMatic. I just downloaded it and tested it out with InDesign CC 2014 and it seems to work fine.
Hi
I installed SmartyIndex. When I want to use it, after opening text file (which has words to be indexed separated with a ;), below error message appears:
Error number: 21
Error String: Undefined is not an object.
What is the problem?
Indexing in InDesign certainly needs updating. So do the programs listed you’ve listed, Dave. Thanks anyway. :-)
I do agree with you Alan!
You can check this independent software: PDF Index Generator [www.pdfindexgenerator.com]
I should have said that 2 of the links don’t work, for me. :-)
If the page numbers of an InDesign book (.indb) change, will the index numbers change?