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Best Practice—Create an Index Using Index Entry Mode and Saved Layouts

Creating an index is an extremely important part of developing a project. It is a task that is part science-part art, and it often involves virtually every topic in your project. Therefore, it can be one of the most time-intensive tasks in developing a project. There are ways, however, to make the process a little easier and quicker.

Two features for more efficient indexing

For authors who insert index keywords all at once, Flare provides two features that can be quite useful ("Index Entry Mode" and "saved layouts"). These features help authors add index keywords more efficiently.

Index Entry Mode Flare's Index Entry Mode lets you add index keywords to the Index window pane more quickly than you could otherwise. With the Index Entry Mode, you do not need to move around the interface as much; you simply click in the topic where you want to insert an index keyword and start typing (without typing over your topic content).
Layouts Flare lets you save different layouts of the interface. So you could have one layout saved for when you are creating topics and adding content, and another layout for when you are indexing. In your indexing layout, you probably would want to have the Index window pane open.

What to do

When you are near the end of the project development process and ready to create your index, do the following:

Open the Index window pane (select Tools>Index>Index Window, select View>Index Window, or press F9).
Save the layout (Window>Layouts>Save Window Layout As). Give the layout a name such as "Index."
Set the interface to the Index Entry Mode (Tools>Index>Index Entry Mode).
Insert your index keywords.
When you are finished inserting index keywords, turn off the Index Entry Mode (Tools>Index>Index Entry Mode).
In the future, if you need to insert more index keywords, open the saved layout (Window>Layouts>Select Layout> [Name of Layout]) and repeat Steps 3-6.