Hi,
I am a newbie at Scrivener, which is a wonderful tool : thanks for it.
I often need to create an index - and event different kind of indexes in my works : index of names, index of places, etc. For me, this is as important as footnotes.
It seems it is not possible with Scrivener, but it would be a really powerful tool…
Thanks,
(Sorry if this topic has been discussed before, I have not found it)
Scrivener encourages you to build your own through the use of its extensive feature set for doing so. Keywords, References, internal hyperlinks, document templates, Collections (especially of the saved search variety) and so forth can all be used to build systems that keep track of tags in the text, flags on files, and build a rich web of connectivity between related items.
So the main question I would have for you is: what sorts of things are you look for along the lines of improvement in these areas? What things could be done better with tools of this nature. There are a lot of things coming that will help, as well, in future versions. I obviously cannot go into detail yet on that, but suffice to say all of this gets way more attention and coding than footnotes do. 
Hi,
I would also love to be able to create a “classic” index for use in academic texts (I am doing a phd dissertation atm.).
Maybe, a simple way could be to use keywords (the <$keywords> token and
), but I am not sure how to proceed? Maybe a kind of regex?
I would assume that I could write my dissertation with folders as chapters, and I could manually tag the texts in each chapter with the appropriate keywords through the inspector panel. In the compile-situation I want the index to find all occurrences (pagenumbers) for each keyword. This could work in a similar way as compiling the ToC.
But I could also see a relevance of having an index consisting of keywords with internal links to each text (where I have used the keyword).
I recently discovered the “copy documents as ToC” command! 
It would be great if I could create an index of keywords, in a similar way…
Attachment shows a book I have “replicated” into scrivener. Left pane has been created via “copy documents as ToC” command. Right pane is manually created (copied from the book).
Thanks in advance
Best
Nikolaj
I’m not really sure if a printed index at the end of a book, the sort that is usually done by a hired professional once every last bit of text has been written (and thus way after Scrivener’s phase of operation in the development of a printed work), is in the same category as what is being suggested above, however. Maybe I misread, but I think they are looking more for something like the index in the late great Circus Ponies Notebook software, which assembled topical concordances dynamically out of your work, as a tool for your work, not in a static printed list for your readers.
If you’re interested in discussions on the sort of index you’re referring to, there have been a few discussion threads on the topic in the past worth searching for and reading up on.
Hi Amber,
Yes, I see what u mean and I agree with u, in that the classical indexes are typically done by professionals, when all writing has ended. And it also implies som rules (which topics and which sub-topics to include etc).
It just occurred to me that I could use both: 1) as a dynamic tool while writing (with internal links) and 2) the static version which is only needed in compilation-process…
Generally it would be nice to somehow get more out of using the existing keywords-pane in inspector. I know I can do searches and collections, but again I dont know if I can get from those dynamic results to creating some text (think here something like the “copy documents as ToC”-kind of thing)…
Ill try and search this forum for previous discussions.
Thanks for the quick reply
Best
Nikolaj
If you’re open to LaTeX, it’s pretty easy to handle indexing while you write since marking phrases and words is done with the \index{keyword} syntax. Thus you can create a simple little Replacement that inserts that code beside the word you mark. For example:
Replace: ^$@^
With: \index{$@}$@
Or if using MultiMarkdown, With: $@
The “$@” part captures everything in between the carets and then prints it into the replacement output wherever it appears. Thus ^stick^ becomes \index{stick}stick.
I don’t see a good correlation between sectional meta-data like keywords and specific spots in the text that need marking, like this, but I suppose if you cut your draft down into very small pieces it could work for some purposes.
But again, I think we’re kind of hijacking the original poster’s thread.
Microsoft Word can do indexing of the kind you’re wanting. You have to highlight the keywords you want to index in the main text and generate an index entry for them, and then after you’ve done that for all the terms you want to index throughout your document, Word will dynamically generate an index for you. I’m not sure why Scrivener couldn’t do this as well.
