How to Use MakeIndex

MakeIndex is a program for making an index in a document generated with L^ATEX. The first step in producing the index is to put the necessary \index commands in your document, as described in the next section. Here, I describe how to generate the index after the \index commands are in place.

Let's suppose that the root file of your document is myfile.tex. You must make the following changes to your document:

Add the makeidx document-style option to the list of options in the \documentstyle command. (See page 21 of the L^ATEX manual.)
Put a \makeindex command in the preamble (between the
\documentstyle and \begin{document} commands).
Put a \printindex command where you want the index to appear—usually at the end, right before the \end{document} command.

You then run L^ATEX on your entire document, causing it to generate the file myfile.idx, which I will call the idx file. Next, run the MakeIndex program by typing the following Unix command:

makeindex myfile.idx

This produces the file myfile.ind, which I will call the ind file. If MakeIndex generated no error messages, you can now rerun L^ATEX on your document and the index will appear. (You can remove the \makeindex command first so the idx file is not regenerated.) If there were error messages, see Section

By reading the index, you may discover additional mistakes. These should be corrected by changing the appropriate \index commands in the document and regenerating the ind file. If there are problems that cannot be corrected in this way, you can always edit the ind file directly. However, such editing is to be avoided because it must be repeated every time you generate a new version of the index.