Peter Kahrel

InDesign documents can contain only one index. But when you need more than one index, for example, a subject index, a language index, and an author index, there are ways to work around that limitation. Simple prefixes There’s an age-old trick that goes back to workarounds used in the previous century in word-processors. The trick […]

Cross-references are printed in the order in which they were added to the document. If you add to a topic a cross-reference to the topic Python, and later, at the same topic, create a cross-reference to the topic JavaScript, you end up with See also Python; See also JavaScript. This can be fixed with a […]

Here’s a way to filter file types in your Open File dialog box.

InDesign doesn’t distinguish letter-by-letter and word-by-word sorting, it supports only letter-by-letter sorting.

Unlike subtopics, which InDesign sorts, cross-references are printed in the order in which they were added to the document. If you create a cross-reference to the topic UXP, and later, at the same topic, create a cross-reference to the topic JavaScript, then another one to AppleScript, the Index panel shows them in the order you […]

Topic names cannot natively be styled in the Index panel. However, a simple solution is to add text tags such as <i>. . .</i> and use two GREP queries in the generated index to apply character styles and remove the tags, or set up a GREP style in the topic paragraph styles to hide those […]

The terms ‘concordance’ and ‘index’ are not used in the same way by everybody. For the purposes of this web page, I use concordance for a list of occurrences of one word in its context and index for a list of several words, each word accompanied by one or more page references. There are several types of index (word […]

Sort a table on up to three columns. Formatting can be preserved.

Apply a paragraph style to index entries that start a new letter. Optionally insert section headings.

Learn two easy ways to convert footnotes and endnotes to marginal notes in InDesign.