colored headings

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Teri Jurgens

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Jun 19, 2025, 12:31:51 PMJun 19
to SKYIndexUsers
Dear collective wisdom,

My editor would like the index submitted with all the main headings in blue. I cannot find anything that would let me do that in SKY or easily in Word format. This is a very large index and I would not want to select every main heading to change it in Word.

Also, the editor would like B.C.E. and C.E. in small caps, and I am having no luck figuring that out in SKY either. I would appreciate any help with either of these issues.

Thanks so much,
Teri Jurgens
Nimble Index

Heidi Blough

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Jun 19, 2025, 12:45:22 PMJun 19
to Teri Jurgens, SKYIndexUsers

Set index options to have the main headings in bold in Sky.

 

In Word, place the cursor in a main heading. The click Select in the Find/Replace/Select/Editing function. All the bolded main headings will be highlighted. Change the text color to blue.

 

Heidi

Deborah Patton

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Jun 19, 2025, 12:53:47 PMJun 19
to Teri Jurgens, SKYIndexUsers
Whoa!
That's a tall order your editor has requested -- to make the main entries in color! If the font doesn't matter (for Unicode purposes), you could export it to an Excel file. Then select the entire main entry column and change that to blue. But since the only way to do this is to export it as a text file, that format would screw up curly quotation marks, apostrophes, and other beyond-ASCI characters we take for granted. Even en dashes in page ranges. I have no idea how to get it out of Excel and into a Word file properly... I'd tell the editor you don't have the tools to do it.
But I do know about small caps. Go to Options>Preferences and at the top in General Preferences, check the box for the next to the last option: Generate strikeout text as Small Caps. Except it doesn't work. I tried it on an existing record and then I tried it on a new one.  It generates as strike-out text not small caps. I'll report that to Kamm.
Deborah

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Maria Sosnowski

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Jun 19, 2025, 1:24:14 PMJun 19
to Deborah Patton, Teri Jurgens, SKYIndexUsers

I’m using Sky 7 and when I put my cursor in a grid for a main entry and go to format and select strikeout prints as small caps, it does generate as small caps in Word.  I do have the option selected in the Options>Preferences menu as Deborah described. 

 

Maria

Theresa Duran

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Jun 19, 2025, 2:00:27 PMJun 19
to SKYIndexUsers
Changing all MHs to blue should be easy in Word, provided that your SKY output is preset to RTF, which applies a paragraph style to each heading level.

In your generated index, put your cursor on any main heading and then click the Styles tab at the top of the Word ribbon. It should show the current style as Main, among a list of other styles. Right-click on Main and then select Modify. A dialog box will pop up, allowing you to change the font color from Automatic to whatever shade of blue you want. Then click OK, and all the MH text will be in blue.

HTH,
Theresa


From: 'Maria Sosnowski' via SKYIndexUsers <skyind...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2025 10:24 AM
To: 'Deborah Patton' <ma...@pattonindexing.com>; 'Teri Jurgens' <terij...@gmail.com>
Cc: 'SKYIndexUsers' <skyind...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: [SKYIndexUsers] colored headings
 

tone...@comcast.net

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Jun 19, 2025, 9:28:33 PMJun 19
to Heidi Blough, Teri Jurgens, SKYIndexUsers

Teri,

For the small caps, you go to Options>Preferences and in the General Preferences section, check the box that says Generate strikeout text as Small Caps, and then Save.

Remember to initially type the letters in lowercase, then you can strikethrough them (Ctrl+Shift+K), and that will yield small caps which show up that way in the index pane. If you type in capital letters, then they will be regular caps defeating the purpose.

I know Deborah said that it didn’t work for her, but it does work for me. I am using Sky 8. Give it a try and see if it works. Remember that it should show up correctly in the Index Pane. Then go ahead and Edit/Print the index (Shift+F12 or the printer icon) to check it.

I will say that if you have already created the index with B.C.E. and C.E., then it will be tedious to go through and make them all lowercase (Ctrl+L) and then strike them through. But you at least can group on B.C.E. and C.E. to get them all lined up. But I can’t think of any way to only select those letters in multiple records to change them all at once other than one by one.

Hope this helps and you are able to get it figured out! Though I do often wonder when I see posts like this: don’t publishers pay people to do this? Anyway, Good Luck!

 

Tony

 

From: Heidi Blough <inde...@heidiblough.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2025 10:45 AM
To: 'Teri Jurgens' <terij...@gmail.com>; 'SKYIndexUsers' <skyind...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: [SKYIndexUsers] colored headings

 

Set index options to have the main headings in bold in Sky.

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Deborah Patton

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Jun 19, 2025, 9:32:44 PMJun 19
to tone...@comcast.net, SKYIndexUsers
All lower case for small caps! Thanks Tony --
Deborah

Teri Jurgens

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Jun 30, 2025, 11:14:51 AMJun 30
to Deborah Patton, tone...@comcast.net, SKYIndexUsers
Thanks to all who responded to my issues. I turned the index in on Saturday and thought I would let you know my experience with these formatting requests. Small caps: I followed the directions exactly, but oddly enough some of the B.C.E.s came out in small caps but some came out strike-through. I did copy and paste to change those. I followed the exact same steps for the C.E.s, but it didn't work at all, so I highlighted one and reduced the font size until it matched the BCEs and again did copy and paste.

I was not able to get the main headings in blue at all. It changed everything to blue. I sent the index with the mains bolded and the editor said not to worry about it, they would change the color.

Thank you to everyone for your suggestions. I think after this when I get unusual requests like this I will ask first if it can be done in house before I spend a lot of time trying to figure things out.

Best,
Teri

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