The Family History Book Index helps readers quickly locate individuals featured throughout your book. This article explains how the Index works, how to customize it, and how to add or remove it from your project.
In this article:
About the Family History Book Index
The Index is an optional feature that can be added through Book Options. When enabled, it always appears at the very end of the book. Its position is fixed, so it will remain the last section of the book even if additional pages are added later.
The Index lists individuals featured throughout the project, along with the page numbers where they are mentioned. To help distinguish family members with similar names, birth dates may also be included when available.
Updating the Index
The Index is dynamic and updates automatically as you build and edit your book. Similar to the Table of Contents, it cannot be edited directly.
MyCanvas page templates automatically include the information needed to generate the Index. However, if you add a blank page for photos, stories, or other custom content, individuals featured on those pages will not appear in the Index unless they are manually added.
To review or update who appears in the Index:
Navigate to the page you would like to edit.
Open the page's Settings panel.
Review the list of people associated with that page.
From there, you can:
Remove someone you do not want included in the Index.
Add someone manually if they are missing, such as an individual mentioned in custom text or added to the page manually.
Any changes made will automatically update the Index.
Removing the Index
The index is included by default in every book, but you can remove it if you wish. To delete the entire index:
Open the Preview (double-page spread view).
Click the DELETE tab located below any index page.
All index pages will then be removed from your book.
Adding the Index
To add the Index to your book:
Open Book Options.
Select Add Index.
The Index will automatically be added to the end of your book.
Editing Font Size and Style
⚠️ Because the Index refreshes automatically as you edit your book, any font, layout, or photo changes made directly to the Index pages may be overwritten during a refresh. If you would like to customize the appearance of the Index, we recommend waiting until you have finished editing the rest of your book before making those changes.
To edit the appearance of the Index:
Select the text box you would like to modify.
Choose a font style from the font menu.
Bold and Italic Fonts
To apply bold or italic formatting, select a font that includes one of the following variations:
Bold
Italic
SemiBold
BoldItalic
SemiBoldItalic
Unlike a traditional word processor, the editor does not include separate Bold or Italic buttons.
Change Font Size
Use the arrows next to the font size field to increase or decrease the text size.
Change Font Color
Click the A icon to choose a preset color or use the color sliders to create a custom color.
Change Text Alignment
Use the alignment button in the toolbar to adjust text alignment. Clicking it once will center the text, clicking it again will right-align the text, and clicking it once more will return it to left alignment.
