416-993-4953 32 Grenville Street M4Y 1A3 CGreaves@ChrisGreaves.com |
|
|---|---|
.JPG)
Automatically Index a Word Document
Please Contact Me if you would like to be informed of new releases of Indexer.
- No email needed
- No time limit
- No questions to answer
- No name, no pack-drill
- No strings attached
- Absolutely free
- Like a coffee mug, a ball-point pen or a baseball cap
- But way more useful
- THE one-click solution to your biggest documentation problem
Your Biggest Problem
Your biggest problem in documentation is not creating the stuff, it’s getting readers to navigate it.
The obvious solution is an Index at the back of the document (look in any text-book or reference manual)
So why don’t people install an index?
Because it is too darned difficult.
Check this out in any version of Microsoft Word:
Step 1. Select a word or phrase of text.
Step 2. Copy it to the clipboard
Step 3. Choose Insert
Step 4. Choose Field
Step 5. Choose Category= Index and Tables
Step 6. Choose {XE}
Step 7. Choose Mark Index Entry
Step 8. Paste in the text you copied 30 seconds ago (or type it in)
Step 9. Type in any auxiliary text.
Step 10. Choose Mark
Step 11. Choose Close
Repeat steps 1 through 11 pretty well for each instance of a word or phrase you’d like to see in your index.
No wonder people don’t create indexes.
We will do the mathematics later on.
Wouldn’t you think Microsoft would come up with a Solution?
Well they did, sort of.
Half-baked, I call it.
If you prowl around Microsoft Word (Choose Insert, Reference, Index and tables, Index) you’ll come across “AutoMark”. The idea being that if only you could come up with a 2-column table of handy words and phrases, Microsoft Word would AUTOmatically MARK your terms with you.
Save you all that work.
What a great idea.
So, about the 2-column table holding all your Interesting Words. How does Microsoft Word help you with that?
They don’t.
That’s why I call it a half-baked idea.
What is Needed Here?
What you want (admit it!) is a device that with one-click does everything for you and spits out a 3-column Index at the foot of your document.
No questions asked.
Just DOES IT!
Don’t go running to Microsoft for that.
Come to me.
Free Download of the 1-Click Indexer
What is Involved?
Well you first of all need to download the package, read the installation instructions (“ReadMe.txt”) and follow them, then re-open Microsoft Word, open your 50-page technical document, and click – just once – on the little running-man icon.
Then you get to sit back and wait for about 50 seconds.
While you are doing that, here’s the math I promised you:
- Suppose a 50-page document with 20 words or phrases per page.
- That’s 1,000 words or phrases to be marked.
- Whether you like it or not, it is going to take you 60 seconds to run through those 11 steps, especially in the long run. You’ll need stretching-breaks, tea-breaks, coffee-breaks, and all the rest.
- So say 1,000 minutes to get the job done, errors and omissions galore.
- That’s 16 hours, give or take.
- That’s 2 day’s work, not including emails and phone calls.
And in the time it took you to read that bit of calculation, Indexer completes its task and presents you with a lovely 3-column index at the foot of your document.
Take a few minutes to see that it has worked properly.
Amazing
Two day’s work compressed down to under a minute!
Free Download of the 1-Click Indexer
How Does He do it?
He’s clever. (That’s me I’m talking about).
You’ve just made use of a rules-based engine called the Interesting Words Engine.
It’s a piece of program I wrote that uses a Table of Rules (so you can modify them if you want to!) to determine all the Interesting Words in any chunk of text, where “any chunk of text” includes your document.
Having found all the Interesting Words it’s a simple task to build a 2-column Concordance Table (I do that for you!) and pass it to Microsoft Word (I do that for you!) and tell Microsoft Word to AutoMark the entries (I do that for you!) and then, once the 1,000 {XE} entries are in place, someone has to go to the end of the document, type in the word “Index”, set the format to be 3-columns and insert the {Index} field.
I do all of that for You
With just one click.
Impressive, huh?
Free Download of the 1-Click Indexer
No, really, is that all there is to it?
No, there’s more .
Loading
416-621-9348 CGreaves@ChrisGreaves.com
Toronto and Mississauga, Thursday, February 28, 2013 6:09 PM
Copyright © 1996-2013 Chris Greaves. All Rights Reserved.