Updating index from Word file in Book feature

Question

I prepared a book using the book feature. 15 chapter files making up the book. The client is going to supply the Index as a Word file with page numbers from his book's word file, which I was hoping to spill into a file in the book and Update the page numbers. I have done this when the book is all one file, but will it work in the book feature? Also, what if a thread is broken somewhere (there were lots of photographs and I think that may have happened a few times). Will that effect the indexes ability to update the page numbers (provided it even works in the Book feature)?
Thanks!

Answer 1

Little Toddler wrote:
The client is going to supply the Index as a Word file with page numbers from his book's word file ...
That's No Good. The page numbers as they were in the original Word file are worthless.
.. which I was hoping to spill into a file in the book and Update the page numbers.
InDesign cannot update the page numbers in an index that was created with Word.
I have done this when the book is all one file, but will it work in the book feature?
Uh. Perhaps you did not (see above). Only if you made this index entirely in InDesign is when that's possible. (But yeah, "Include Book" is an option in the Generate Index dialog.)
Also, what if a thread is broken somewhere (there were lots of photographs and I think that may have happened a few times). Will that effect the indexes ability to update the page numbers (provided it even works in the Book feature)?
Proper or improper threading is not a problem.
The problem is you must distinguish between an index made in Word and one made in InDesign -- and I mean "made with", not just "typed in". If your writer supplies you an index made in Word, you can throw it out of the window. What good are his page numbers to you? You can only mimick his index (sort of) if your processed InDesign files still contain the original Index Markers that the author used in Word, and then you are using the same workflow, not "updating the author's index".
If there are no index markers in your InDesign files, that's where it stops for you. Perhaps you want to insert them, one by one, in their original location (using the supplied index as a guide) -- only then you can create an up-to-date index with InDesign and using your page numbers.
There is another option: if your author used Word's features to generate the index with, he could try the opposite. That is, you hand him a PDF of the latest version of your book, and he inserts page breaks and adjusts page numbering in his Word document to match yours, word by word. This can be done quite fast because all other formatting is not important -- it's the What's on this Page Number that counts. When done, the author can use Word again to re-generate the index, and hey! the page numbers will match the final version!
Of course this only works when the author actually used Word's native indexing facility -- if he typed in each entry and its associated page numbers, you got yourself quite a job trying to find what word went where in your version.