How do you create an Index in Pages?

I've also abandoned the PC, in 2007. I've since then wished for Apple Pages to provide an element that would allow us to create an Index in Pages. Put that never came. So I've had to stick to MSWord for Mac-2011) which does a wonderful job of this. If and when Pages allows it, I should transfer to Apple Pages.

No version of Pages for Mac, iCloud, or iOS has ever had the ability to generate an index. Only Table of Contents can be automatically generated based on applied Paragraph styles. If you want to generate an index, in a universally acceptable document format, then use the MS Word counterpart for Mac, cloud, or iOS.

Apple created Pages for consumers, and as such, it lacks many features that commercial (business) word processing applications include such as indexing. Wishing for Apple to add a commercial application feature is a waste of hope.

Finally, we get a straight answer to this Index question. We (well... I did anyway) kept hoping the Index would eventually show up on subsequent versions of Pages. We have a final statement from Apple, and I appreciate it very much. Now we know where we stand and where we should stand for the future. Thank you Apple.

This is a user to user support community, where Apple Leadership and product teams neither read, nor participate in the community posts. I am not an Apple employee, and certainly cannot speak, or speculate about future Apple product planning.

However, I am a long-term Pages for Mac user that ordinarily contributes to that, and other support communities.

Thanks for that info. It was your Id. and your statement : "Wishing for Apple to add a commercial application feature is a waste of hope." You sounded so final that I figured only an Apple representative could make such a peremptory affirmation.

Hi. Did you ever get an answer to this question. I fear the answer is, "There is no way to do this." TOTAL bummer if that is the case. Please let me know. I am writing a software manual and was hopeful I could use this vs. InDesign. I am a FrameMaker user but have logn sinced abandoned the PC.

Thank you,

AK

On the menubar, Insert -> Table of Contents. It's what you need. This object will contain paragraph styles that you select, and it will only look for content after itself. By that I mean that if you insert it at the end of the document, it will show nothing.

I hope this helps.

Thanks Muhammad. As you say, this is okay for a table of contents, but not for an index.

The only option seems to be to create one 'manually'. I have found two suggestions to use a search to assist with this:

• one using find: http://pagesfaq.blogspot.com.au/2008/01/how-do-i-create-index-in-pages.html

• another using Applescript: http://superuser.com/questions/84580/making-an-index-in-apple-iwork-pages

Perhaps this will be one of the pieces of functionality, along with other things like easily merging to labels, that will be added to the next version of Pages (please Apple)?