[Solved] Index Confused by Punctuation Characters

[GEMosley]

I have a large document with hundreds of strings defined as Heading 3. When I create an Alphabetic Index, I populate it by doing a FIND ALL on Heading 3 items and then INSERT. Works well for everything except strings containing a dash or a colon which cause the index entry to be split into two or more segments, depending on the number of "special" characters.
Any way around this?

Index as created.

[Bill]

Please upload a small sample document so your settings can be analyzed. I can't reproduce the problem.

[GEMosley]

OK. Sample attached to original post. Thanks.

[Bill]

The problem is caused by saving in the .doc format. Save in the native .odt format instead.

[FJCC]

I am not seeing the problem even in doc format. I deleted the index, removed all of the existing index entries. searched for all Heading 3, marked those as index entries, inserted an alphabetical index and it did not split the entries with colons. Saving as doc and reopening the document did not change anything.

[Bill]

The split shows up in the Edit Index Entry dialog after the .doc file is opened. It doesn't show up initially in the alphabetical index, but if you delete the index and insert a new one, the split should show up in the new index.

[GEMosley]

FJCC: Not sure why your result differs from mine. I've attached a screenshot of the Index right after creating it. The first entry should be "1:54 (4/5)", which, instead, is split into two lines. Same thing with the "Dreileben" entries.
Bill: I tried saving as .ODT as well as deleting the Index, saving as .ODT, re-opening the .ODT file, selecting the Heading 3 entries and creating the Index. The splits happen no matter what I do.

[FJCC]

Bill was right. The index looked correct in my doc but updating it caused the entries to get broken up after the colons.

Try using the attached document from which I have removed all of the Index marks and the alphabetical index. My procedure to insert an index is
1. Use Find & Replace to find all of the Heading 3 entries.
2. With those selected, choose the menu item Insert -> Indexes and Tables -> Entry
3. Click OK in the resulting dialog
4. Move to the end of the document and then choose the menu item Insert -> Indexes and Tables -> Indexes and Tables
5. Set the Type to Alphabetical Index then click OK

That is probably what you were already doing but I wanted to make sure we follow the same steps on the same document..

[Bill]

In MS Word, to get a colon in an index entry, it has to be escaped by putting a backslash before the colon. This doesn't work in Writer.

Why can't I get certain characters my headings?

[Bill]

Bill: I tried saving as .ODT as well as deleting the Index, saving as .ODT, re-opening the .ODT file, selecting the Heading 3 entries and creating the Index. The splits happen no matter what I do.

Saving the .doc file as .odt won't undo the split in the index entries. You have to delete the index entries then insert them again. The new index entries will not be split and will not split when saved as .odt. The split only occurs when the file is saved as .doc.

[GEMosley]

OK. Beginning to see... I notice that all the Heading 3 items have a slim shading indicator preceding the first character. That presumably signals that these items have been selected/inserted into an Index. However, deleting the index (right-click on Index area and select "Delete Index/Table") does not remove those shade indicators and when I re-Insert the Index, they're all re-populated into the "new" Index. How do I delete the selected status for those Heading 3 items?

[Bill]

To delete the index entries, right-click in front of the first gray index entry indicator and select "Index Entry". On the Edit Index Entry dialog, click "Delete". The index entry will be deleted and the next index entry will be selected. Repeatedly click "Delete" until the dialog closes. Update the alphabetical index to verify that all index entries have been deleted.

[GEMosley]

Problem solved. ODT was the answer and worked when adding a fresh entry to the Index. Thanks for all the help and suggestions.