When the list of indexed TERMS is known in advance, what you have to do is to go back to the KEYS, and then format your IndexMatic² queries so that they capture these keys and output those terms.

If the final index entries have the form <LastName>, <FirstName> (e.g, Jobs, Steve) it may be assumed as a first approximation that querying <LastName> (i.e, Jobs) is sufficient to identify a match. Of course—as the very example of "Jobs" shows—this strategy may still lead to homonymic ambiguities, so manually refining some queries remains a necessity.

Now, to convert the initial list into a clean query list, the method I suggest is to replace each
    <LastName>, <FirstName>
by
    <LastName> => <LastName>, <FirstName>

Noting that $0 always represents the match, you can even shorten the query as follows:

<LastName> => $0, <FirstName>

Note: When dealing with proper nouns, do not forget to force case sensitivity in IndexMatic².

But, how do you quickly transform the original list into the desired format? Easy! Execute Find/Change in InDesign and use the following GREP:

Find what:  ([^,]+)(.+)
Change to:  $1 => \$0$2

Then your query list is ready to run in IndexMatic²:

How to manage 'LastName, FirstName' queries from InDesign to IndexMatic².


• See also:
IndexMatic² Manual (PDF);
IndexMatic² | Frequently Asked Questions.