Quark Forums

Hey, I'm doing an index for about 3000 people names, professions, and page number. There is supposed to be a tab in between each name, profession, and page numbers. As it stands now, i need to go through the entire list and tab space each one individually. Is there a way to tell or format the index to Automatically Tab? This would be very helpful, because as it stands, Im going to have to do this very very tedious task. 

 Not even one helpful hint? :[

Gee, you're a patient bugger aren't you? I mean, hardly 9 minutes went by before you felt the need to stir the pot again... On a Friday night even!

How did you generate your Index and how do you wish to have it shown?

 

Quick, you have 9 minutes to answer before I deem that you no longer need the solution...

 

 Oh no, It seems I've waited more than 9 minutes. The fact of the matter is that 16 people were browsing the forum, and i expected at least 2 "I don't knows" And for the patience, Guess when the deadline was? Yesterday! Yep, this is no longer needed, hence the rush. Thank you for your rude response though.

tobolate:

Oh no, It seems I've waited more than 9 minutes.

So you did, I guess this wasn't as pressing an issue as you originally thought... 

tobolate:

The fact of the matter is that 16 people were browsing the forum, and i expected at least 2 "I don't knows" .

Never occured to you that those "people" might be more in the business of finding solutions rather than giving them?

tobolate:

And for the patience, Guess when the deadline was? Yesterday! Yep, this is no longer needed, hence the rush.

Tell me again why a lack of preparation on your part makes it OUR problem? I did offer to help, I still do, but I guess you prefer to wait until you are faced with another rush to  ask you "pressing" question again. I mean this way you could always blame your being late to our lack of responsivenes to you Friday night "urgent" request. 

tobolate:

Thank you for your rude response though.

 

No need to thank me, as you can see, I gladdly dispense rudeness when rudeness is due.

Now, the question remains, to you wish to learn or not? If so, plase answer my original question, if not... Well thank you for your brief visit and do come again at any time (except on Friday night when we have our get together at the local brewery )

For a little more perspective, sometimes a company will have its employees available to instant-message with users, but this isn't one of those. To get an answer in 9 minutes on a Friday night you'd have to be really lucky. This is a regular user-to-user forum where people like you and me put questions up on a board and hope someone who knows the answer will look in and help. Michel is very knowledgable and has been a great help to me and many others, so please consider taking his offer to help you by providing more info. Your deadline might be past, but if you get an answer, you can get yourself out of this problem in the future.

Ironically,  your answer may be to use a script. I'm clueless about scripting, but Michel is an ace, so think about coming back.

 Thank you for your concern Migman, I haven't had a chance to get on here in a few days but would like to applogize to micheal, you see, It was not actually my project, it was my fathers, and he was stressing greatly over the issue so i went out to help, When no one answered it seemed like much more than 9 minutes to me, because of the atmosphere, and the reason i freaked out on micheal was because we did finish it in time, but I'm not sure if he know (his description says hes in montreal) the American stock market isn't booming and for a small buisiness to miss a deadline could be death to it. Its not like we waited to the last minute, we're just so stacked up with jobs that it ended up there. Sorry for the misunderstanding there. Although if you would still like to help I will Post how it was supposed to be formatted.

 

Joe Whatever M.D. ............................................Oncology......................................................67

 

It went Name on the left side, profession in the middle of the page, and page number on the right. Separated by dots. From what we can tell this Is impossible because of the Variable in side of names. or when there are two page numbers (ie. 67,68,125) But there is some hope if there is a script can do this. Thank you.

Is this material that has been gathered by Quark with its index feature, or just text that has been keyed-in? What separates the name from the specialty and the page number currently (a space, more than one space, manually created leaders made with multiple periods, etc.)?

Glad you decided to stick around... Between Migman and I, I am sure we can find a solution.

 

OK, for me, in order to get a clearer picture (aside from your sending me a sample document), I would like to know more about what you are trying to achieve and what to this point you have done towards that goal.

But first, I would like to make sure we are talking about the same thing as many people start thinking "Index" when they should be thinking "List".

1. What kind of document do you have to "index"?  What does index entries look like in that document?
   
2. You said you indexed your current document, how? Did you use multi-leveled indexes?
3. Whate ere the steps needed to get from "generated index" to what your example shows? 

I will try my best to describe it here, Since it is a document with people's names on it to send a sample ill have to go through and scramble their names for security puposes. But From what I can tell this is an Index not a List. Its for a directory which is supposed to help patients find a doctor that is good for them. There is some 3,000 doctors in the directory all on different pages, not unlike a book. So what my father and I are dealing with is the Index for the directory. Somewhat like the beginning of a book where it tells you the names of the chapters and the page it can be found on. That's all the info I can get on it tonight, but tomorrow I will bring the questions you both asked to my father and get the answers for you.

tobolate:

... So what my father and I are dealing with is the Index for the directory. Somewhat like the beginning of a book where it tells you the names of the chapters and the page it can be found on.

Humm,  those are normally generated using the "lists" feature.. You now see why I asked the question?

There might be a way to cut down the amount of work, but I think there will still be more steps than you would prefer. I'm sure you have considered using find/change, but the fact that the names are by nature different, you can't plug the names into find. I'd try putting the specialty into the find field.

 If the separator between name and specialty and between specialty and page number is consistent, you can do something like this:

 Find: {space}Oncology{space
Change to: {tab}Oncology{tab}

For the find field, just type the space, and for the change field, use \t for the tab. If the separator isn't a space, use what ever you have. You will have to do this for each specialty, but there will be fewer specialties than individual names.

If you have to do this again next year, consider using the list feature. Apply a style to the name and specialty with a tab in between. Make a new list and have it gather the name/specialty with the list feature adding the page number. The style you apply to the list after it is built will have the tab leaders, and you can update individual entries and build a new list without having to do any of the stuff you are doing manually now.