The Tagging and Index Mapper tool was created by Microsoft as a Word add-on.
It allows indexing to be done to unique identifiers (UIDs). It is not
supported by Microsoft at this time but is still used for some indexing
situations. The indexing is done in one of the indexing software programs
not Word. The indexer uses the UIDs rather than page numbers as locators.
After indexing is completed and final pagination has occurred, a file is
supplied to the indexer that contains the correspondence of the UIDs to the
final page numbers. TIM provides a tool for the indexer to perform the
mapping but it is often ineffective (see user comment below).
LevTech's Mapper utility has been used for various locator mapping
situations: updating section numbers to new sections numbers, adding
electronic links to print locators, etc. - and now it can perform a TIM
mapping when the Word macro is unable to do so.
"I live by Mapper and it has saved my sanity multiple times in TIM projects.
The TIM tool is very unpredictable in whether or not it will "perform" ...
there's no way to predict if it will fail or not ... I've had projects just complete normally and smoothly and thers just die suddenly ... with no
log/explanation for the reason ... and I've been left with a mess on my
hands .... with no way to complete the conversion process except with Mapper.”
— Lucie Haskins, indexer
