Mis-sorted Entries

An index lists the terms and topics that are discussed in a document, along with the pages that they appear on. To create an index, you mark the index entries by providing the name of the main entry and the cross-reference in your document, and then you build the index, using the Index group on the References Ribbon in Word.

Mis-sorted entries can happen for a lot of reason, but global mis-sorting, such as your headings aren't merged, page numbers appear without text, heading sorting appears somewhat random, but is not very common.  I had an attorney with this mis-sorting problem last week, and here is the answer.

First, verify that your index isn't sorting by page number; also verify that your subentries aren't appearing as entries. The key clue is that absolutely none of your entries is sorting properly. Sometimes you can have an index looking something like this:

               EBU Exhibit A

                  , 395

               Darrnen’s Nose, 137

               Endora

                  Tricks, 102

               Samantha’s baby, 430

               Savannah

                   , 395

The cause and solution are: tracked changes. Tracked changes can include partial index entries, which is why you can get such weird results.

To solve the problem, you need to accept all changes before creating or updating the index.

If you're not prepared to accept changes for some reason, then the only way to get a usable index is to save your work in a new file, accept changes there, and then run the index there. Keep in mind that your page numbers will likely be different than what you'd get if you accept changes in the original document.