Using the Index Designer

The Index Designer provides a graphical way to add keywords to your index and link topics to them. All you need to do is open your project, click the Index tab, and add keywords and topics. You can even drag and drop topics from the Topic List into the Index Designer to quickly add keywords and link topics to them at the same time.

You can add both topic keywords and index file keywords. The Index Designer identifies each kind with a unique icon.

You can also use the Index Designer to create ALink names and link topics to them. Unlike keywords, ALink names are not displayed in the compiled index. Authors use them as navigation aids (by adding ALink controls to topics).

See the Index Designer:

Keywords

There are numerous ways to work with keywords in the Index Designer. For example, you can:

ALink names

ALink names (known as A-keywords in WinHelp) are terms that you can associate with any number of topics as a way to group them together and provide common ways to link to them. Although these names are not displayed at the index tab, you can use the Index Designer to work with them. For example, you can: