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I have a 1200 page document with 280,000 words.

Is that too big to index?

I tried to index it (hopefully following the correct steps), but all I got was 20+ minutes of the rainbow beach ball.

Those PPC machines are definitely starting to show their age, but I don't think you should have to wait 20 minutes for anything! At what point does NWP become unresponsive? Are you indexing from a concordance file?

When using the 280,000 word document, the rainbow beachball comes out instantly.

When I use a 38,000 word document, the indexing happens very quickly. No appearance of the beachball.

You think I should do this on a more powerful machine?


Oops! Need to update that signature. The G5 is my "powerful" machine. So far I'm doing this work on a PowerBook G4 1.67GHz.

A G4 is pretty old these days by OSX standards, but I think telling you to upgrade isn't a fair answer. I'm hoping we can find a solution for you.

I ran a test on a 370,000 word document, where indexing marked a total of 260,000+ entries, and it wasn't quick; it took upwards of a minute. This is something we can definitely improve upon, and I'll file it as something to optimize. But even so, I don't think that explains your situation.

Am I correct in thinking that when you say the beachball appears for 20+ minutes, you mean the task never completes? Perhaps there's something special in your document that hangs Nisus Writer. Would you be willing to send us your document and indexing word list so we can test?

Martin -

Unfortunately it's a sensitive document that I do not wish to circulate. Thank you for the offer.

Let me try again on the Dual G5 & see what happens.

I can understand your concerns. One possible way to avoid them: run your document through the redaction macro before sending it to us. It irreversibly garbles all the text in your document. If this is something you'd consider, here is what I'd have you do:

1. Download the redaction macro and install it.
2. Open your large file and run the redaction macro.
3. Once the redaction is complete (which might take some time), select all text in the garbled file and choose the menu Insert > Index > Remove Indexing (the redaction does not remove/garble indexing marks).
4. Save that file somewhere and zip/archive it together with your word list. You can redact your word list file beforehand too, if you like.

There's no guarantee this will reproduce the problem for us, especially after the redaction, but it's worth a try. If you're willing, you can email the files to us directly at . Thanks!