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Options for formatting a table of contents

When generating or editing a table of contents, use these options to determine the appearance of the generated table of contents text. Some of these options are available only when you click More Options in the dialog box.

Note: The settings in the Style section apply only to the currently style selected under Include Paragraph Styles. You can specify different formatting options for each style.
Entry Style
For each style in Include Paragraph Styles, choose a paragraph style to apply to the associated table of contents entries.

Page Number
You might want to create a character style that formats the page number. You can then select this style in the Style pop‑up list to the right of Page Number. (See Define paragraph and character styles.)

If you want the page numbers of the TOC to include prefixes, or to use a different numbering convention, see Define section numbering.

Between Entry And Number
Specify which characters you want between the table of contents entry and its page number. The default is ^t, which tells InDesign to insert a tab. You can choose other special characters, such as Right Indent Tab or Em Space, in the pop‑up list. For a complete list of special characters and how to work with them, see Insert glyphs and special characters.
Select the existing text in the box before you choose a different special character, to make sure that you don’t include both characters.

You might want to create a character style that formats the space between the entry and the page number. You can then select this style in the Style pop‑up list to the right of Between Entry And Number. (See Define paragraph and character styles.)

If the entry’s paragraph style includes a tab leader setting, and if the tab character (^t) is selected, a tab leader appears in the generated table of contents. For more information, see Create TOC entries with tab leaders.

View full size graphic
You can specify a character that separates an entry and page number, as well as a style to apply to a character.

Sort Entries in Alphabetical Order
Select this option to sort table of contents entries in the selected style alphabetically. This option is useful for creating simple lists, such as lists of advertisers. Nested entries (Level 2 or 3) sort alphabetically within their group (Level 1 or 2, respectively).
Note: The sort order for a table of contents is determined by the document’s default language setting. To change the default language setting, make sure nothing is selected and then choose a language from the Language menu in the Character panel.

Level
By default, each item added to the Include Paragraph Styles box is set one level lower than the item immediately above it. You can change this hierarchy by specifying a new level number for the selected paragraph style.

Create PDF Bookmarks
Select this option if you want the table of contents entries to appear in the Bookmarks panel of Adobe Acrobat 8 or Adobe Reader® when the document is exported to PDF.

Run-in
Select this option if you want all TOC entries to be run into a single paragraph. A semicolon followed by a space (; ) separates the entries.

Include Text On Hidden Layers
Select this option only if you want the paragraphs on hidden layers to be included in your table of contents. This is useful when creating a list of advertisers or illustrations that may not appear as visible text in the document itself. Deselect this option when you’ve used layers to store various versions or translations of the same text.

Numbered Paragraphs
If your table of contents includes a paragraph style that uses numbering, specify whether the TOC entry includes the full paragraph (both number and text), only the numbers, or only the paragraph.


Comments

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Comments


No screen name said on Apr 7, 2008 at 12:08 PM :
Anyone else having trouble organizing the data within the table of contents? I'm having trouble. I have organized all of my paragraph styles and I can import the information and create an actual table of contents, but I cannot organize the data using the 'levels.' I am trying to import author's name then book title and everytime it comes up as book title and then author's name. Any suggestions? Is there a way to tell Indesign CS3 which order to organize your paragraph styles? Have I found a bug in the system?
Bob - Adobe Writer said on Apr 7, 2008 at 4:04 PM :
The "Levels" you set have no effect on the final list unless your list is alphabetized, in which case, the entries are alphabetized by level. The order of appearance in your document determines which items appear first. You may want to pose this question in the user forum:

www.adobe.com/support/forums
Matthew Huhn said on Apr 18, 2008 at 5:30 AM :
I am trying to update a TOC with some page additions/deletions and everything now has a ^S in front of the page # and I cannot see how to get rid of it, short of manually editing it all out or keeping the original TOC.

The document started as a CS2 doc and is now in CS3.
Bob - Adobe Writer said on Apr 18, 2008 at 7:37 AM :
As a general rule, whenever a converted document is acting up, use the File > Export command to save the document in Interchange (INX) format. Then open and save the document. See if that works.
No screen name said on May 6, 2008 at 12:00 PM :
I am having no luck inserting a tab leader into my table of contents. Basically I want my Table of Contents to look like this:

Subject Name..............................................................................................10

but I can't get the "..............." to show up. I followed the instructions in help but nothing is working, any step by step instructions, or ideas?
No screen name said on May 7, 2008 at 9:05 AM :
I'm having trouble generating an alphabetical ToC. When I generate the items are listed alphabetically, however the associated page numbers are generated sequentially. Anyone have an idea why this is happening?

Thanks in advance.
Goshere said on Jul 26, 2008 at 3:39 PM :
Subject: Table of Contents formatting - character formatting

Issue: Character formatting is not adhering to the character features defined
in the paragraph format being used for the TOC.

I can generate a table of contents with the paragraph formatting I want, but
the character formatting adheres to the item's formatting on the document
page -- NOT THE DIFFERENT CHARACTER FORMATTING NEEDED FOR
THE TOC - Even though I have defined the new character features within the
paragraph style the TOC is successfully using.

Every time I update the TOC, the character formatting reverts to the colors
and sizes of their page styles, but I need an independent style for use in the
TOC - so it will NOT look as it does on the pages.

Hopefully I am missing something simple and obvious - please advise.
No screen name said on Sep 29, 2008 at 9:07 AM :
I am also having problems with the local character style overriding the toc style.

The TOC generates correctly, including the right paragraph style in the list. I have it set up to apply a different character style to the list entry, the leader and the number.

The paragraph style is applied correctly to the list entry, and both para and character styles are correct for the leader and the number. However, the character style for the entry is the same as it is in other places in the doc, not as specified in the toc styles.

Difficult to explain that one clearly!

Anyway, help is really appreciated.
No screen name said on Oct 9, 2008 at 5:30 AM :
I have a question regarding a table of contents. I've put together a book with 12 separate chapters put into the book. I've been try to get the table of contents to work properly, but no luck. Some of the headings aren't even in the proper order. It doesn't appear to put my headings first all of the time. I'm also using a numbering sequece throughout the entire book. For example: 1.1, 1.2, 1.2.1, 1.2.2.....and so on for each other chapter like chapter 2 would start with 2.1 and so on. My problem is that up until chapter 2 my numbering sequence is working. But once I generate a table of contents, it changes my chapter 3 to start it's numbering at 3.3 and not 3.1 as it should. I works as 3.1 and so on when I haven't generated a table of contents, so I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Also why is it not puting everything in the proper order in my table of contents? Sometimes it will come up with a 3.4 in a 1.2 section of the table of contents. and will have 3.4 as a chapter 1 page number being 2 or 3 when it should be page 18. Why is this when every chapter has the same paragraph styles and the order I've placed everything in the table of contents is title, 2head, 3head and 4 head. Should it not appear in the order I've put them. Is the numbering sequence throwing everything off?

Please help!
jasonpklee said on Nov 20, 2008 at 11:34 AM :
Hi I'm having trouble with the table of contents as well. More specifically, I'm attempting to edit the order and format of the TOC but it just won't change regardless of the different levels I set.

I made sure I use the correct (and seperate) style for the heading and subheading, but the TOC still somewhat jumbles them up. For example, I have 1, 2, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 3, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 4 with the single numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 as the headings, and any with a decimal a subheading. Putting these into the TOC however, gives me :

1, 2.1, 2, 2.2, 2.3, 3.1, 3, 3.2, 3.3, 4

It seems like anything on the same page i.e. 2 and 2.1, 3 and 3.1, ends up being switched around, even if I change the levels. Is there another way I'm supposed to use? Or is it a bug? Any comments are welcome. Thanks.
Bob Bringhurst - Adobe said on Nov 20, 2008 at 12:00 PM :
You're better off posting questions like these on the user forums:

www.adobe.com/support/forums
jetrudeau said on Dec 6, 2008 at 6:46 AM :
I'm using InDesign CS2. On the issue of Table of Contents formatting - I had
a similar problem where the text in the TOC had the proper paragraph style
assigned, but the text continued to appear in the format of the original style -
so a headline stayed in 20 point type, where I wanted the TOC to be in 10
point for example.

The cause of the problem in my document was CHARACTER formatting in
the original paragraph. Because of past experience with Quark, the author
had applied CHARACTER formats to all the characters in the paragraph.
The default names for character styles exactly matched the paragraph style
names, so she thought it necessary to format the characters as well as the
paragraph. In fact both the character and paragraph style definitions were
identical, and there was no need for character formats at all. They were
completely redundant.

Since character formats override paragraph formats, THAT is what appeared
in the TOC. By removing all character formats, the TOC started appearing as
intended, controlled by the paragraph style designed for the contents of the
TOC.

I hope this helps. Took me about two days of hair pulling to figure this out.

 

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