Indexing of MANY names for a cemetery book

Edit: Sorry I didn't notice that Barman58 has already posted the same suggestion.

I probably haven't understood the problem, but I was wondering if a mail merge might help?
That is,

• unformatted data is in Excel (or Access), then
• Word has a formatted version of the fields for one person, using Mail Merge fields
• This could include word field codes around the name, so it can appear in Word's index at the end
• Link the word fields to the Excel data fields
• Mail-merge it into a new document and save the document.
• Add the Word index to the end and update it to generate

But I could be getting hold of the wrong end of the stick. (Does that expression work outside the UK? )

Yes, thank-you. However, the page numbers will not be update-able as would a Word-generated index.

Let me give mail-merge a try and I'll get back to you ASAP.

This option did not work...

Barman58 -- The book is layout is complete. Several chapters have yet to be added. The TOC is fully updata-able.

I DO understand the process and have used it with smaller samples with great success.

Now, must I mark every single one of the thousands of records that I want included in the index? Is there a way to "gang-mark" or to use a special "heading" (like with the TOC, but different, of course). I will spend years marking for the index in 25 books containing 110K names.

Leila6300 said:

Well, like with the manual index marking and creation within Word, I need the LARGE index to automatically update when the pagination changes (when text changes the page numbers in Word AFTER the index has been created.

I cannot created this LARGE index within Word -- that is what I need to do... If I create it outside of Word, Word does not recognize it to update it.

@Leila6300

Hi that's not quite true

You CAN create an embedded Excel document within Word --if the EXCEL file changes then Word will automatically have access to the new data.

This used back in the days of distant past to be called OLE or something -- it was a successor to DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange).

I haven't done this for ages now as I tend to use EXCEL exclusively but it should be easy enough - create a small TEST excel file, embed it a Word doc and test it.

If you need to mess around in WORD you could have a go with VBA (The basic compiler which allows macros etc) but I think EXCEL would be easier.

With all sorts of nice formats available - why do you HAVE to use word. For text of course you can do it the other way around - embed a WORD document in EXCEL.

With Office the possibilities are endless --IMO office is one of the best Ms products ever.

Cheers
jimbo

I have an idea!!!

Where can I look at the Word-generated table that is made when marking for the index? I*d I could access that, and copy-paste to it. That might work... Anyone know how to see that file?

Hi there
@Leila6300

Here's a good guide to get started - this should work.

Linking Excel Data Into Word Documents

Cheers
jimbo