Indexes can be useful additions to non-fiction books to help readers locate terms or subjects. For some books, it is beneficial to have more than one index. As an example, my current book project on Genesis 1 (co-authored with theologian Ken Turner) will have three: Subject, Author, and Scripture indexes. MicroSoft makes it relatively easy to create a single index in Word, but if wishing to make multiple indexes, the developers seem to have gone out of their way to make it as non-intuitive as possible. When searching the web for solutions, I found lots of teasers, but very few “solutions” that were actually helpful. I didn’t find any that were sufficient to answer all my questions. In the end, I was successful only with insights from my computer scientist wife. To avoid forgetting all those non-intuitive steps for some future project, I wrote up step by step instructions – mostly for myself, but posting it in case it turns out to be useful for anyone else.
Steps for generating multiple indexes (including Scripture references)
All based on MS Office 2019
1) Create a concordance file: A concordance is a two-column table with all variations of words to search in the first column (including variable capitalization, singular and plural, abbreviations, etc.) and index categories as they will appear in the index in the right column. Follow the main entry with a colon and the subcategory term. For scripture references, insert a backslash (\) before the colon to avoid it being read as a sub-category.
For multiple indexes, create a concordance for each index and add dummy characters to the end of each index category in the right column. Note that for a scripture index, if you wish books to be listed in biblical order (rather than alphabetical) leading numbers must be added before each book category to order correctly. To get chapter and verses to order correctly, leading zeros need to be added to avoid a reference such as 10:9 from being listed before 1:10 (so write as 01:10). The dummy text and leading zeros are removed in the final product.
concordance 1 (Author)
| Turner | Turner, Kenneth J.-aaa |
| Davidson | Davidson, Gregg-aaa |
concordance 2 (Subject)
| simile | literary device: simile-bbb |
| metaphor | literary device: metaphor-bbb |
concordance 3 (Scripture)
| Ps. 34:1–3 | 19-Psalms:034\:01–3-ccc |
| Psalm 34:1–3 | 19-Psalms:034\:01–3-ccc |
2) In the document to be indexed, go to References / Insert Index / AutoMark. Select the first concordance file and Open.
Index field codes will appear as, e.g. {XE “Turner, Kenneth J.-aaa”}
(The curly brackets cannot be searched or replaced, but text inside can be.)
3) Do a global search and replace to exchange the dummy characters with the index number identifier.
First turn on Show Marks (the paragraph icon under the Home tab).
Open Replace.
Find –> enter the dummy characters (e.g. -aaa)
Replace –> _^92f_^34^49^34 (use space key where underscore is shown)
– these are Ascii codes that will become \f “1”
^92 = \
^34 = ” (straight double quote, not curly version)
^49 = 1, ^50 = 2, ^51 = 3
Check the box for use wildcards
Click Replace All
Alternative: To append text or commands to the end of index field codes:
Find –> XE “*”
Check box for use wildcards
Replace –> ^&_^92f_^34^49^34 (again, underscore is actually a space)
4) Repeat steps 2 and 3 for each new index.
5) Select an arbitrary word in the document and mark for a temporary index (References / Mark Entry / Mark).
6) Add page breaks for each index. On each page, insert a dummy index. References / Insert Index, pick formatting, number of columns, etc. and click OK.
When it asks if you want to replace existing index, click No.
7) Right click on each index and select edit field, then click on Field Codes at bottom left. A window will open with format coding. At the end of the string add: _\f_”1″ (underscore is a space, make sure double quotes are straight, not fancy). Click OK. All the index 1 entries should appear.
8) Repeat step 7 for each index.
9) Delete the index field code for the random word selected to initiate the indexes. e.g. {XE “whatever”}
10) For repeated trials, all index field codes can be deleted using the find and replace function, entering ^d XE to Find and leaving Replace as blank (view codes has to be turned on).
11) To add a “see X” item in an index, select the first occurrence of the word and highlight it. Go to References / Mark Entry, click on cross-reference, add the term for X, and click OK. Add the \f “1” (or other index number) at the end.
The cross-reference mark is only done on one word, but all subsequent occurrences will need the index field-code tag associated with word X.
12) For the Scripture index, the leading numbers in front of the books of the Bible and leading zeros in front of chapters or verses will need to be manually deleted.
Note: In principle, it should be possible to take a duplicated document with a unique set of index field codes (for a second index) and use the Review / Combine function to merge the second file with the original. This does NOT work. Field codes get mysteriously dropped and fragments of text get duplicated.
I hope this helps someone out there!
