AutoMark Will Not Find or Mark Certain Words

• Microsoft Word for Windows, versions 6.0, 6.0a, 6.0c
• Microsoft Word for Windows 95, version 7.0, 7.0a
• Microsoft Word for Windows NT, version 6.0
• Microsoft Word for the Macintosh, version 6.0, 6.0.1, 6.0.1a

SYMPTOMS

When you mark index entries automatically by using the AutoMark feature (that is, by using a concordance file), Word does not find hyphenated words and may skip duplicate entries with different capitalization. (To locate the AutoMark feature, click Index And Tables on the Insert menu, click the Index tab, and click the AutoMark button.)

There are two parts to an AutoMark file, usually in a two-column table. The left column identifies items for Word to find (search words) and the right column specifies the text for the XE fields. The information in this article applies to the search words in the left column.

     Search Words           {XE} Content
          |                      |
   -----------------------------------------------
   |sample^text        |This goes in the XE Field |
   -----------------------------------------------
   |SAMPLE^TEXT        |Sample information        |
   -----------------------------------------------

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the versions of Word listed at the beginning of this article. This problem has been fixed in Microsoft Word 97 for Windows and Word 98 Macintosh Edition.

WORKAROUNDS

The AutoMark feature cannot find words that contain hyphens. To work around this limitation, perform a search-and-replace on the hyphenated words and replace the hyphens with a special character. To restore the document, replace the special characters with hyphens.

NOTE: Do not use nonbreaking spaces (CTRL+SHIFT+SPACEBAR) to replace the hyphens unless the connecting words are words the speller can recognize individually (for example, "plug-and-play" but not "t-shirt").

When the AutoMark file contains the same word with different capitalization, Word will randomly miss words in the document. The first few occurrences of the word are found (usually the lowercase), but subsequent occurrences are not. If you rerun AutoMark, Word picks up a few more words each time.

To improve the number of entries that are marked, try the following:

• Run the index three or four times.
• Remove "white space" (for example, spaces and tabs) from the concordance file.
• Sort the concordance file.
• Break down the document you are trying to mark into smaller documents.

REFERENCES

"Microsoft Word User's Guide," pages 448-449