I know the table of contents feature seems to work well, as I've used it quite a bit in the past. But creating an alphabetical index (a first for me, at least using Writer) seems to have a number of rather annoying features. I've provided an experiment you can do at the end, but first let me discuss the issues.
1) When creating an alphabetical index, the Columns feature works as expected, BUT ONLY FOR THE STANDARD (DEFAULT) PAPER SIZE! If I attempt to use columns on a 6" x 9" page, Writer still seems to assume a "standard" paper size and doesn't seem to know that I'm using a 6" x 9" page. Thus no matter how I try to tweak the setup, the right column is almost completely off the page on the right. So I can't use columns for the Index - Bummer, but not the end of the world. 2) If I go through and highlight each entry that I want indexed, everything works great (so far as I can tell), and I have the options for "match case" and "whole words only." But in a long document, using a concordance file certainly seems to make more sense, and it SEEMS TO WORK, but it actually doesn't. Issue a) No matter what boxes are checked, Writer goes and marks ALL instances of whatever the concordance entry has: regardless of whether or not it is a whole word or whether the capitalization matches. Issue b) If you add another entry to the concordance file and "Update Index/Table," all instances (even incorrect ones) of the new entry are indeed marked within the file and added to the index, but every earlier entry GETS AN ADDITIONAL marker. As I modify the concordance file to add new items and update the index, I find that the earliest entries have as many markers as the number of updates I've done. Here's an experiment you can do: Open a new document using whatever standard size is in effect. At the top of the document, type dt and press F3. This generates the dummy text. In a separate text editor create a concordance file with the following entries: Breeze;Breeze;;;0;0 Long;Long;;;0;0 Self;Self;;;0;0 Wrist;Wrist;;;0;0 Back in the document, create a new index at the bottom of the page, and mark "Case Sensitive." Then choose the concordance file created above. You'll see that the words "himself" and "along" are marked in the document and included in the index as "Self" and "Long", even though these words never appear in the text. Now add the following entry to the concordance file: Eat;Eat;;;0;0 Find it? It actually marked the last three letters of the word "sweat" which doesn't match the case. In a three hundred plus page document with a surname index this tends to make the index pretty useless, since it's cluttered with erroneous entries which will drive you nuts looking on a referenced page to find something that just isn't there. Sadly, I've obviously done that, which brings up another issue: How do I get rid of the index markers? Going through one by one is far too tedious. I recall that the alternate search and replace had a selection for "index" under properties, but the I downloaded that and the latest version seems to have a serious bug which doesn't let you get to a specific entry on the drop down list for "properties" so that's out. And I don't know if that would be what I need anyway. Any help would be appreciated. -- View this message in context: http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/Index-Quirks-in-Writer-tp4093936.html Sent from the Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: [email protected] Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
