Need hyperlinks index entries in word 2007

You will undoubtedly find that the Index will not retain the hyperlinks added by your macro. As soon as you do anything that causes the Index to refresh (e.g. a print preview or printing the document), all the hyperlinks will disappear. That's because the Index in Word is a field. The only way around that would be to unlink the Index field, to prevent it updating, before applying the hyperlinks. But then the Index would be incapable of any further updates. Even in a document that's no longer subject to ongoing edits, that could in some cases mean the index entries will reference the wrong page #s as soon as you open the document on another computer - or even on the same computer - with a different active printer. That's because Word uses information from the active printer's driver for layout optimisation.

Furthermore, adding hyperlinks from an Index to the corresponding entries in the body of the document won't work unless you duplicate the entries for all those case where there is more than one XE field for the same index entry on a given page (a page that can change as soon as you change printer drivers). That's because Word intelligently combines duplicates into a single Index field entry but a hyperlink can only go to one of those entries. This also explains why criticizing Word for not hyperlinking to entries shows a fundamental lack of understanding of what an Index is and how difficult it would be to manage such an arrangement in a document subject to ongoing edits and/or viewing on computers using different printer drivers.

It's all very well to carry on about how page layout programs can link an Index to a page as some contributors to this thread have done, but page layout programs don't have the ability to optimise a document's layout the way Word does to accommodate changes in printer drivers - and automatically update Tables of Contents, Indexes, Cross-references and the like to take account of that.

yes I did...

After hours of dealing with (not working) suggestions in the web, I made my own solution by VBA. It goes thru the XE-entries, put them in an arry, sort the array and then writes an own index at a bookmark in the document. May be it will become slowly at the end with many Index-entries, I will see.

If anyone needs: if my work is done, I will post the code here - at the moment I'm in a hurry.

Thomas

Did you post in the Uservoice forum at http://word.uservoice.com? I don't think that you will get a reply, but Microsoft does consider suggestions which have received votes.

absolutely no answer. Microsoft does never hear on any of those suggestions. Neither in development of windows nor in office. The thread is years old, anyone of MS will have read the point.

I never had that problem since now, but everything goes digital, so word documents too - and so there is, very unexpectedly ;-) the necessarity for indexes as hyperlinks.

The same old way in every software products: new features, new, new - for new customers but no look on the existing ones.

Maybe it is the sight of a monopolist too.

I couldn't quite believe this is still not possible either, however I took the time to vote

https://word.uservoice.com/forums/304924-word-for-windows-desktop-application/suggestions/9388944-enable-hyperlinking-indexes

Looks like only 3 of us did so it could probably use a few more before anyone even notices it