Add index item by macro

Question

I am struggling with creating a macro that would enable me to create index items by macro. From a former post (LaTeX: is it possible to create a macro to add words to index (using TexMaker)?) I have tried to use the following, but I can't get it to work. I am using TexmMakerX on Mac (home) and Windows (work).

I have added

\newcommand\iindex[1]{#1\index{#1}}

to my preamble. I also added the same line to User -> User Macros, but the macro would only print \newcommand\iindex[1]{#1\index{#1}} on the screen. Also \iindex would not work. I can't figure out how to use this macro... Ideally I'd like it to highlight a word and insert \index{WORD} right before that word.

I am obviously not a LaTeX pro... and I would really appreciate a hint...

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Edit/Comment:

Thanks alls for your kind answers - sorry for forgetting the MWE. Indexing is working fine generally. All commands in my preamble are working without problems.

I have a large document without index, and I want to add an index to it. Since it is really tedious to copy each word that I want to index, then type \index{PASTE} and continue I am looking for a semi-automatic method. In AucTeX on Emacs you could position the cursor within a word and hit a key to index it, but I don't use either one any more. I was trying to achieve sopmething liek this in TexMakerX by combining the \newcommand from the first post above with a TexMakerX makro.

I like the Andrew's suggestion below, but would prefer highlighting a word and indexing it with a keystroke...

Thanks to all, it would be cool if you had an idea to help me.

Answer 1

As you haven't given a MWE it is not clear to me what is not working as this looks fine to me.

Here is something that I have used in the past. In TeX the double quote character is not very useful (as ``life'' is better than "life" in TeX), so when I need an index I redefine the double quotes so that "something" puts something in \textsf and also adds it to the index.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{makeidx}
\makeindex

\catcode`\"=13  % make the double quote character " active
\gdef"#1"{\textsf{#1}\index{#1}} % define "*" to do indexing+\textsf

\begin{document}

Here is "something" that I am "indexing".

\printindex
\end{document}

Rather than my fancy quote command what you have should work, so perhaps your problems lie elsewhere?

To produce the index you need:

• \usepackage{makeidx} and \makeindex in the preamble

• a \printindex where you want the index to appear, and,

• you need to run makeindex on the idx file that LaTeX produces.