Making an Index in Word

If you have people's names in the document in given-name-surname order, select a whole name and click the Mark Entry button, then the whole name will appear in the Main Entry box. Select the given name and press Ctrl+X to cut it to the clipboard; then click in the Subentry box and click Ctrl+V to paste the given name there. Then you can click the Mark All button, and Word will create XE fields for all the occurrences of the whole name in the document. In the picture below, I did this for the name Jane Smith where it's highlighted, and the second one was marked by the Mark All button.

The other way to get the same result is to work without the Mark Entry button. First turn on display of hidden text by clicking the ¶ button on the Home ribbon (because XE fields are automatically marked as hidden text).

Click in the document after a name and press Ctrl+F9 to insert a pair of field braces { }. Between the braces, type the letters XE and a pair of double quotes. Between the quotes, type the surname, a colon, and the given name, like the ones shown in the picture above.

You can copy the field to the clipboard, and then use the Find function in the Navigation pane to locate other occurrences in the document and paste copies of the field there.

Hello Barb,

This forum is a user-to-user support forum. My name is Charles and I am a fellow user with decades of experience using Microsoft Word. I have written extensively on using Word and have authored help articles on the Microsoft site.

The method given by Jay is the only way to do what you want.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/fo...

Try editing the XE fields directly if putting them in using the dialog is not working.

Here is my page on creating an Index.

http://www.addbalance.com/usersguide/complex_do...

Here is my article on dealing with fields:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/fo...

The links are to pages on my website. It is safe. I am providing them because I think those pages contain information that will help you. However, as an Independent Advisor I am required to add the following when posting here with a link to any non-Microsoft site, even my own site:

Required Notice: These are non-Microsoft websites. The pages appear to be providing accurate, safe information. Watch out for ads on the a that may advertise products frequently classified as a PUP (Potentially Unwanted Products). Thoroughly research any product advertised on the site before you decide to download and install it.

If you want, save a sample document with the problem on OneDrive or Dropbox and paste a view link here. That should not contain any confidential or proprietary information. Just a page or two with a couple of index entries should suffice to allow us to directly help.

You can use the Rand or Lorem AutoCorrect function to produce dummy text for a sample document. In a new line, typing =Rand(4,5) and pressing the Enter key will produce four paragraphs, each with five sentences of Microsoft Help text. Typing Lorem(4,5) and pressing the Enter key will produce four paragraphs of pseudo-Latin text.

Here is more on why and how to post such a document so I or others here can help you. https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/fo...

I hope this information helps.

Please let me know if you have any more questions or require further help.

You can ask for more help by replying to this post (Reply button below).

Stay well

Hello again Barb,

I’ll let my fellow community members to see if they have any ideas

Sebastian, I have tried to put the surname in the Main Entry box and the given name in the subentry box, but it won't take it in the subentry! I hate to be dense but do I put the surname in the Main Entry with a comma and then the given name for each person - such as Smith, John and then hit mark all? It tells me I have not marked anyone. I am at a total loss as to how to proceed. I have not got anything marked yet but the first surname and only one given name and am trying to determine how to proceed!

Thanks

Barb

Hello!

Thanks for reaching out.

Please find detailed step by step instructions to create the index you want in this post of Jay Freedman:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/fo...

Hope it helps,

Sebastian