Feb 26, 2015

If you are doing long documents that require an Index to find things quickly for the reader then you need to know about a Concordance file. It will save you from having to individually tag or mark all the words you want to appear on the Index. When you want to properly create an Index you should be using the built in functionality in Word. There is a whole tab dedicated to long documents, called the References tab. Here you find the Index group. Some users use the Mark Entry button to mark the word for inclusion on the Index but that will take a while if you have a lot of words that need to be on the Index. Since you will likely be using the same words often in similar documents especially if you are doing study documents, contracts or technical papers or reports, you will want to create a Concordance File that you can reuse each time you do an Index for a long document. A Concordance File is simply made up of a two column table with no headings. It should be created ahead of time and saved to a location that you know where to find it. Once you have the Concordance file created you can still add to it or edit it any time if needed. The way you create it depends on how you want your Index to look. All of the words you want to appear in the Index so that someone can just look there to see where and how many times that word or topic occurs throughout the document, need to be listed on the left column of the table. See below example.

Left column shows the way the word looks in the document. (These will be the words the program will tag.)	The right column shows what you want it to be listed under in the Index. (ie. Some may need to be a Subcategory that needs to be put under a Main Category, see Services items below)
accomplishments	accomplishments
debt	debt
stock	stock
deferred tax benefit	deferred tax benefit
non-recurring	non-recurring
extraordinary items	extraordinary items
net operating loss	net operating loss
equity	equity
stock	stock
transaction services	services: transaction
management services	services: management
financial services	services: financial
strategic services	services: strategic
investment	investing
investing	investing
Investment	investing
investments	investing
legal	legal
Legal	legal

1. Once you have the Concordance file finalised you would then close it and open the document that you want the Index to be in and place the cursor at the point where you want it to start. (Usually this is at the end of a long document under the heading “Index”.
2. Next go to the Reference Tab and in the Index Group click on the insert Index button.
3. Click on the AutoMark button.
4. You will then be offered to browse to the Concordance file.
5. Once you click on open it will quickly tag all the words on the left column.
6. Next you need to again click on Insert Index and then perhaps you want to right align the page number so check that box or change it from 2 column to 1 or more. You can even change the font by clicking on Modify. Each level of heading can be formatted how you want individually.
7. The Index should now be placed at the point of the cursor.
8. Perhaps check the page numbers are accurate and if you had the Show/Hide button on you may want to turn it off so that the file doesn’t show any tag or extra hidden codes that sometimes inflate the file so that the page numbers are slightly off. If they are not quick right then you can start at step 6 and say yes to replace the existing Index. Recheck the page numbers for accuracy.

So there you have it, the 8 steps to using a Concordance file. For more information, check out New Horizons' Desktop Applications portfolio.