Creating page-level indexes

After you create triggers to define individual pages in page groups, you can create index tags on the individual pages.
Note: In AFP Visual Environment you can display measurement units in inches or millimeters. To change the measurement unit, click View ⇒ Units.
To create an index tag for a text block:
  1. In AFP Visual Environment, open a sample AFP file. Then click Mode ⇒ AFP Indexer.
  2. If the AFP file does not contain page definitions in page groups, create one or more page-level triggers.
  3. Select a page in a page group.
  4. Click the text that you want to index. The text blocks you can select are defined in the AFP file, from one character to the entire line of text. You see a red box around the text you selected.
  5. Right-click the text and click Create Index Tag. You see the Create Index Tag window with the text to index in the Edited index value field.
  6. Use the default code page encoding or select an encoding from the drop-down list if the text displays incorrectly.
  7. Type a descriptive name for the index tag in the Index tag name field. For example, if you select Joe Smith for the index tag, the name could be Customer name.
  8. Click Page within page group for the index type.
    You see the Select index value type and Select page definition fields.
  9. Select the index value type:
    AFP file
    The index value is displayed in the Edited index value field. Decide whether you want to use the entire text value as the page-level index or only part of the text. You can edit the text block to reduce the number of characters you use for the index value (you cannot increase the characters in a text block). To select part of the text as the index tag:
    1. Click Edit index value.
    2. Edit the index value in the Edit Value window. For example, if the account number is one text block, 01-345678, you can create an index value with part of the account number, such as 345678.
    3. Click OK.
    User defined
    The User defined value field is displayed. Type the text you want for the index tag.
  10. Select an existing page definition from the drop-down list.
  11. Click the Advanced tab to change the threshold to look for a text value that is in slightly different positions on some pages. You can select a range from 1/100 to 1 inch or from 1 to 25 millimeters. Although text might appear to be present in the same location on each page, slight position variations can occur in the AFP file. The threshold defines how far the text can be from the original location and be considered an index tag. For example, a threshold value of 12 indicates that the index tag can be located within .12 of an inch or 12 millimeters, either vertically or horizontally. Usually the default threshold value is sufficient (10 for inches or 2 for millimeters).

    Keep in mind that if you increase the threshold above the default value, you might create an index tag you did not expect because the match is only done on location, so the first text block found in the threshold range is used as the index tag.

  12. Click OK.
  13. Verify that the correct index tag has been created:
    1. Right-click on the page in the left pane and click Properties.
      The name of the index tag and its value are listed in the TLE field.
    2. To close the Properties window, click X in the upper right corner.
    3. If the index tag is incorrect, click Tools ⇒ Modify Definitions to modify or delete the tag. Page-level indexes are listed under Page Group Definition ⇒ Page Definition ⇒ Page Indexes.
Parent topic: Working with page-level indexes