DEXter for Microsoft® Word

Tired of indexing the hard way? Tired of messing with XE entries and bookmarks? Need to do embedded indexing without muss or fuss? You need DEXter! DEXter is a Microsoft® Word add-in that makes indexing in Word a snap.

If you’ve tried to do much indexing using Microsoft® Word’s built-in indexing feature, you know how cumbersome and inefficient it is. Its drawbacks are legion, but one of the worst is its inability to let indexers see and edit more than one entry at a time. In Word, indexers must work “in the dark,” lacking a comprehensive list of entries for reference.

Dedicated indexing programs, such as Cindex, Macrex, and Sky, overcome this limitation but have one of their own—the inability to easily embed index entries into the text of an electronic document.

DEXter bridges the gap, overcoming the limitations of dedicated indexing programs and of Word's indexing features:

• You (the indexer) never need to enter, edit, or even look at embedded “XE” entries.
• Bookmarks used to specify a range of text are inserted automatically based on the text you have selected. No need to mess with them, either.
• Index entries are available and visible at all times in an editable, sortable table.
• You create and edit index entries directly in the index table rather than in a dialog box or the document being indexed.
• Entries are not embedded until all of them have been made and edited, at which point they are embedded automatically, based on the bookmarks in the indexed document.
• Entries in the finished index can be sorted letter by letter or word by word.
• Subheadings can be sorted by page order as well as alphabetically.
• Leading words (such as “in,” “by,” and “of,” specified by you) in subheadings can be ignored in sorting.
• Other words or characters (specified by you) can be ignored in sorting.
• Words or characters (specified by you) can be sorted as other words or characters.
• Words in quotation marks are sorted by letter rather than by punctuation, putting the words where they belong rather than at the start of the index.
• Numbers (such as 80806 and 8008808) are sorted properly.
• Cross-references are automatically combined and sorted alphabetically.
• Page numbers can be sequential (such as 3, 4) or inclusive (such as 3–4), depending on whether you have selected the text sequentially or inclusively.

Dexter provides many other features that make indexing more efficient:

• Automatically insert page numbers into the index table for reference, based on the text you have selected. (In dedicated indexing programs, page numbers must be typed.)
• Automatically insert selected or copied text as the heading in a new index entry.
• Automatically duplicate an existing entry.
• Automatically swap heading and subheading when duplicating an existing entry.
• While swapping, automatically capitalize the first word of the index heading (optional).
• While swapping, automatically lowercase the heading when it becomes the new subheading (optional).
• Automatically transpose words. “Washington, George” becomes “George Washington”—or vice versa.
• Automatically adjust specified words and capitalization during a swap. “Apples: in pie” becomes “Pie: apples in.”
• Automatically insert cross-references based on existing headings.
• Jump from a table index entry to the corresponding bookmark in the reference document, or from the bookmarked text to the table index entry.
• Set a special bookmark at the beginning of a topic. Then, when you put your cursor at the end of the text that discusses that topic, automatically select from your current location back to the bookmark.
• Index multiple documents at once.
• Compile the index table with a dedicated indexing program, such as Cindex.
• “Deconstruct” an existing index into an index table.

Try DEXter free for 45 days!

Download DEXter for Microsoft® Word 97 or higher for PC or Macintosh.

After downloading the program, unzip it using Windows®, WinZip (PC), or Stuffit Expander (Macintosh or PC). You'll then see the following files:

Installing DEXter: Instructions for installing the program.

DEXter.dot: The DEXter program template.

Using DEXter.doc: The program documentation in the form of a Word document. Read it!

Fkeys.doc: A keyboard template to print and place above your keyboard. Use it!

Other files: See DEXter's documentation for instructions.

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