Hello,
I have some questions about indexing across multiple files, and was wondering if anybody had insight into how i could go about doing it in the way that I’d like to — I’m just not sure that the way I’m theorizing is possible.
Currently I’m working on a book of 500 profiles of business people. 6 profiles per page for the first 480, 5 pages of 4 at the end for a special section. These are split across about 11 files to keep Indesign chugging along smoothly (48 profiles per file, plus special section file). It is an annual ancillary and we are finishing up the 3rd year for it. My question is, is there a way to turn every instance of a paragraph style into an index entry without having to go one-by-one to each persons name and adding it. Is there a way to do this? So for example, every profiles name has is attached to a paragraph style conveniently named “Name.” Is there a way to just auto search and add any use of this paragraph style?
My current set up is taking our excel sheet master list of people, adding in a column with page numbers and then just copy pasting it into my index file and using tabs to format it. So as an example, i have column A be the last name, column B is blank, column C is is first name and column D is the page number. Once in Indesign i find and replace the two tabs between column A and C to become “, ” and then just format the remaining tab with leader dots between first name and page number. It’s very easy and simple, but if for whatever reason our flatplan changes, it’s a bit of a pain to make updates.
If anybody has any ideas on how to automate Indesign to make an index of 500 already existing names, that would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Austin
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