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• • January 24, 2018 at 6:39 pm #101212
    Kasra Yousefi

    Member

    Hi there,

    I’m working on a quarterly journal.

    I have 4 journal issues per year which belong to a single volume.

    Issue #1 Page number start from 1

    Issues #2, 3 and 4 resume the numbering from issue #1

    Each of these four issues has their own indices generated for them.

    We need to have a single index for the entire volume, covering all 4 issues.

    Now the question is how to merge these 4 indices into one.

    Please don’t suggest grouping them as an InDesign book. For some technical reason, it’s not possible.

    Thanks

  • January 25, 2018 at 8:53 am #101221
    Michel Allio for FRIdNGE

    Participant

    Hi Kasra,

    Just by curiosity, why not a book?

    (^/)

    • January 28, 2018 at 3:09 pm #101292
      Kasra Yousefi

      Member

      Hi @obi-wan-kenobi,

      The reason is some of the journal issues are an indesign “book” with each article a single file attached to them, and some journals are a single indd document. Now consolidating all these documents into a another “book” will introduce some unintended changes to them. So I prefer to work on “frozen”data.

      Kind regards,
      K

  • January 25, 2018 at 9:08 am #101224
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    I think there is a relatively easy way to do this, by 1) making an index for each document; 2) doing a find/change to change all the numbers in the index to something like “1:45” (for issue 1, page 45); 3) combining the indexes; 4) using sort to sort them properly.

    There might be some additional help here:
    https://www.kahrel.plus.com/indesign/lists_indexes.html
    or
    https://www.indiscripts.com/category/projects/IndexMatic

  • January 28, 2018 at 3:35 pm #101293
    Kasra Yousefi

    Member

    Thanks @david-blatner,

    I’ve done something similar to your recommendation, but for making my life easy, I exported the indices to excel and performed operations there. Now my last remaining step, is actually an excel problem now! How smart!

    Look, my master list for the term “annual report” now looks like this:

    Annual Report  E161
    Annual Report  E150
    Annual Report  E243, E260, E275, E284
    Annual Report  E243

    Now I need to do something to merge all “annual report” entries into one:

    Annual Report  E161, E150 ,E243, E260, E275, E284, E243

    I’m heading for excel forums now!

    Kind regards,
    K

  • January 28, 2018 at 4:00 pm #101294
    Michel Allio for FRIdNGE

    Participant

    Just about your last comment!

    Building [modifying if already built] each index, it could be “simple” to avoid:

    “Annual Report E243, E260, E275, E284”

    to have:

    Annual Report E243
    Annual Report E260
    Annual Report E275
    Annual Report E284

    … So, avoiding this issue, simply merging the indexes by copy-paste, “sorting” the paras and playing a simple script to get:

    Annual Report E161, E150 ,E243, E260, E275, E284, E243

    … you could be … happy!

    [… but it”s just a comment!]

    (^/)

    • January 28, 2018 at 4:49 pm #101295
      Kasra Yousefi

      Member

      Hi obi-wan-kenobi,

      I can’t follow the exact steps of your thoaought process, but I get the idea. Maybe I can fix it by some GREP.

      Thanks,
      K

    • January 29, 2018 at 7:27 am #101297
      David Blatner

      Keymaster

      Obi-wan loves scripting, so when he looks at a problem, he usually thinks “Oh, this is easy with a script.” :-)

      However, your solution using Excel sounds great!

  • January 29, 2018 at 9:24 am #101299
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    I told Mr. Excel (Bill Jelen) about this thread, and he sent me this via email (he was about to teach a class so he couldn’t log in to post it). Bill will be speaking at The InDesign Conference this June.

    Step 1:
    Get each page number separated to a new row. You can use the InDesign technique suggested by Obi Wan Kenobi. If you have Excel for Windows, the new Power Query Split by Delimiter To Rows (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGygtOutMtg) will solve it. In Mac Excel, you will have to use Data, Text to Columns, and then some copying and pasting.

    Step 2. You have topics in column A, single page number in B. Headings in Row 1 and data starts in row 2.

    Sort the data by Page number within topic.

    Heading in C1: Temp Result
    Formula in C2:
    =IF(A2=A1,C1&”, “&B2,”B2)
    Copy that formula down
    Heading in D1. Best Answer For Topic
    Formula in D2: =IF(B2<>B3,True,False)
    Copy that formula down

    Select Column C. Copy. Paste as Values.
    Turn on the Filters using Data, Filter.
    Filter column D to True
    While filtered, copy column C and paste back to InDesign.

    • January 29, 2018 at 2:29 pm #101301
      Kasra Yousefi

      Member

      Hi @david-blatner,

      Thank you very much for detailed information. I will follow the steps and get back to you.

      Kind regards,
      Kasra

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