Teach yourself or follow along in class how to create an index in a help authoring tool, such as RoboHelp, HTML Help, AuthorIT, or Doc-To-Help. Learn these procedures well enough not to need notes to perform them again, and write quick-reference-style notes in case you forget how in the future.

Note: Austin Community College's Business and Technical Communications program offers a full course in indexing! See courses.

Learning the Procedures

In this lesson, learn how to do the following:

1. Start the help-authoring tool and Choose HTML Help.
2. Open that modeling project you created in a recent unit.

If you have not done the modeling project, go to the help-modeling project.

3. In this course, you don't have enough time to study indexing. However, you can take a quick look at this indexing overview
4. Create an index for the highlighting help file that looks like the following:
   
   
   
   
5. For subentries, link to the specific points in the topics where those subentries are discussed (use bookmarks). For example, when you click the code text, you go to the spot in the alternate-fonts topic that addresses that issue.
6. For situations where you have a synonym entry (for example, strong is a synonym of emphasis), create a cross-reference to the preferred index entry (where all the subentries are located, in this example, emphasis).
   
   If there are no subentries in the preferred entry, there is no reason to create a cross-reference from the nonpreferred entry; just link both to the topic. For example, code text and programming samples go to the same topic; link both to the topic — don't use a cross-reference.
7. Compile the simple project as a .chm file, and view it (through the help-authoring tool).
8. Find the .chm file on the computer, and double-click it to ensure that it runs.

Writing about the Procedures

Here are the guidelines for writing about the procedures for this lesson:

• Write the quick-reference notes for this lesson in the help-authoring tool you are using.
• Write these quick-reference notes "for real": include warnings about potential problems that can you trip up.
• Otherwise, you are not obliged to add a lot of explanatory detail. In "guide" information, you see lots of explanation, definitions, screen shots, and alternative methods. That's not needed or expected here.
• Just use simple lead-ins, numbered and bulleted lists. For notes, use paragraphs introduced by a bolded label such as "Caution:" or "Impotant!" or "Attention."
• Practice good clear economical writing style. Use imperatives (commands) and second-person ("you"); avoid passive-voice and telegraphic writing styles.
• Use subheadings for the subsections of these quick-reference notes.

Revising

Your instructor will review these quick-reference notes rapidly, requesting revisions if necessary and recording an "ok" in the gradebook when no revisions are needed.