Alphabetic indexes

OpenOffice.org 3 Writer Guide

Chapter 12: Tables of Contents, Indexes, and Bibliographies

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• Tables of contents
• Customizing a table of contents
• Using the Index/Table page
• Using the Entries page
• Using the Styles, Columns, and Background pages
• Maintaining a table of contents
• Alphabetic indexes
• Customizing index entries
• Customizing the appearance of an index
• Maintaining an index
• Other types of indexes
• Bibliographies
• Creating a bibliographic database
• Adding a reference (citation) into a document
• Formatting the bibliography
• Defining the paragraph style for the bibliography
• Updating and editing an existing bibliography

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Creating an alphabetic index

An alphabetical index (referred to as an index) is a list of keywords or phrases used throughout a document that, if listed in order, may help the reader find information quickly. Generally an index is found in the back of book or document and lists several keywords or phrases in alphabetical order with page numbers.

This section describes how to:

• Add index entries
• Create an alphabetic index quickly
• Customize the display of index entries
• Customize the appearance of an index
• View and edit existing index entries

Adding index entries

Before you create an index, you must create some index entries.

1. Either highlight the word or phrase to add to the index or place the cursor at the beginning of the word or phrase. (If you want to add multiple words as one entry it will generally be better to highlight the entire phrase.)
2. Click Insert > Indexes and Tables > Entry to display a dialog box similar to that shown below. You can accept the word or phrase shown in the Entry box or change it to whatever you want. If you placed the cursor at the beginning of a word, clicking on the Entry text box inserts the word into the text box.
3. Click Insert to create the entry.
   

   

   Inserting an index entry.

   See Customizing index entries for an explanation of the fields on this dialog box.

4. When you are satisfied with the entries, click Close.

You can create multiple entries without closing the dialog box. For each one:

1. Click at the location in the document that you want to index.
2. Click again on the dialog box.
3. Change the entry if needed, and click Insert.
4. Repeat steps 1–3 until you have finished with the entries, then click Close.

If field shading is active, see Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > Appearance > Text Document > Field shadings, when a selected word or phrase has been added to the index, it is shown in the text with a gray background. Index entries whose text is different from the text in the document are marked by a small gray rectangle.

You can also open the Insert Index Entry dialog box by clicking the Entry icon on the Insert toolbar, as shown below.

Entry Icon on Insert Toolbar.

Creating an alphabetic index quickly

Now that you have some index entries, you can create the index.

Although indexes can be customized extensively in Writer, most of the time you need to make only a few choices. To create an index quickly:

1. Click in the document where you want to add the index and click Insert > Indexes and Tables > Indexes and Tables.
2. In the Type box on the Index/Table page, select Alphabetical Index.
3. In the Options section, you may want to uncheck Case sensitive (so that capitalized and lower-case words are treated as the same word) and uncheck Combine identical entries with p or pp.
4. Click OK. The result will be a typical index. Writer does not update an index automatically. If you add, delete, or change the text of index entries, you need to update the index. To do this, follow the steps outlined in Updating a table of contents.