Creating an index referencing line numbers

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This is a pretty obscure request. May some of you will
view it as a challenge.

I have a document which has each line numbered (using Word’s line numbering feature). I want to create an index for the document, but instead of the index showing the page numbers that the indexed word appears on, I want the index to show the line numbers.

Can Word do this for me (perhaps with some help from Visual Basic)? Otherwise, I’ll have to do all of it the manual way.

Thanks for your suggestions and interest!

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Yes it’s a pretty obscure request.
Yes it’s an interesting challenge.
Yes Word can do this for you (with some help from VBA).
Here’s how:

When you mark your index entries in the document (I don’t know much about Indexes, so I’m assuming this is done by means of the Mark Index Entry dialog which can be accessed via Insert>Index and Tables etc.):

Under Options click on the Cross-Reference option button.
Replace the default text (“See”) with “xln” (that’s lower case XLN) – this is a marker for the macro to find later.

Then before inserting the Index proper, run the following macro – this looks for the “xln” reference in each XE (Index) field, and replaces it with the line number for the start of the marked text.

Sub IndexWithLineNumbers()
'Gary Frieder  February 2001  Word 2000
'Purpose: Enable display of line numbers for index entries
'To set up in Document: When marking Index entries, set Option to
' cross-reference,and replace "See" with "xln"

Dim objCurDoc As Document
Dim lngLineNum As Long
Set objCurDoc = ActiveDocument
ActiveWindow.View.ShowHiddenText = True
Do
    With Selection
        .HomeKey Unit:=wdStory
        With .Find
            .ClearFormatting
            .Replacement.ClearFormatting
            .Text = "xln"
            .Forward = True
            .Wrap = wdFindStop
            .Format = False
            .MatchCase = True
            .MatchWholeWord = True
            .MatchWildcards = False
            .MatchSoundsLike = False
            .MatchAllWordForms = False
            .Execute
            If .Found Then
                With Selection
                lngLineNum = .Information(wdFirstCharacterLineNumber)
                .TypeText (Str$(lngLineNum))
                End With
            Else
                GoTo Exit_IndexWithLineNumbers
            End If
        End With
    End With
Loop
Exit_IndexWithLineNumbers:
With ActiveWindow.View
    .ShowHiddenText = False
    .ShowAll = False
End With
End Sub

PS: close readers will note that I found a quick use for the Find/Replace Do..Loop which Phil R. shot down last night.

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Nice! Can I steal^H^H^H^H^H borrow this for my Indexer tool and give you credit?

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Sounds OK to me.

Here’s a Lionel Trilling quote which Ken Getz used at the start of the foreword of his VBA Developer’s Handbook:

“Immature artists imitate; mature artists steal.”

Maybe nowadays this would be called “appropriation”. Adds an additional layer of meaning to “found objects”, eh?

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>”found objects”

This sounds like a reference to something I ought to know in VB/VBA.

What is a “found object” in our environment? Does it have a meaning?

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Nah, these were art world buzzwords maybe 20-30 years ago (don’t know too much about this) – “found objects” were objects the artist found in his environment and incoporated into his art. Extending this from physical artifacts to cultural ones, a found object could be some element of for instance, mass culture, which the artist could ‘appropriate’ and reuse in a context which commented on its original cultural meaning blah blah blah.

I was just playing around with this and the idea of appropriating code objects (particularly ones that deal with the “Find Object”)….

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*** Geoff W URL Added ***

A recent example being Bar Tabs ([Post#: 17072 / re: 16673 ] )

Andrew C

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Hi Gary:

>>PS: close readers will note that I found a quick use for the Find/Replace Do..Loop which Phil R. shot down last night.<<

Must be another Phil R. This onewould never shoot down one of your ideas.

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Thanks so much for your help! I’ve been down with the
flu since the post, so haven’t had a chance to try it.

Thanks again!

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