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BO32414581ty2e
Participant
September 20, 2023
Question

Autopopulating table in indesign

  • September 20, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 508 views

Does anyone know how to make an auto populating table in indesign. Preferable it's a hack to the Table of contents. What I want to to is make a table of contents that will populate with a Header1 then next line list the header 2s but then either before or after a page number list a header 3 asscociated with the previous header. 

I am trying to make a specification manual that says something like Fixtures, lists underneath faucet, sink etc and then on the line of each says SPECIFIED or TBD. 

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    1 reply

    James Gifford—NitroPress
    James Gifford—NitroPress
    Legend
    September 20, 2023

    I'm not quite grasping what your goal is, here. A TOC can be set up to have exactly that hierarchy based on selected paragraph styles (usually headings, but need not be). And you can create multiple TOCs with varying styles that could achieve different ends.

     

    And if the TOC style system (which is really a whole defined schema, not just a "style") doesn't meet your needs, the Cross Reference system is quite flexible and can be modeled into TOC-like, Index-like or whatever-you-like formats.

     

    Can you be a little clearer on how your 'table' differs from a TOC? Because things like a TOC followed by a Table of Figures or Table of Equations, and using a TOC variant, are quite common.

    B
    BO32414581ty2eAuthor
    Participant
    September 22, 2023

    Thank you for responding!

    I am an architect and when making a building will propose and get selected 100s of products all listed in a specifications book. Each page of the spec book proposes a product. There is also a box that states when the product was suggested and it's status (whether is approved, revised or tbd) see the attached example. 

     

    the TOC is helpful in that it gathers all the proposed specifications on one page and states the page number. But I'd also like to know what the status is and date of each suggestion. Either before or after the page number. That way we can track progress. So the TOC may look like this. 
    Kitchen

    Fix-01 sink...............28  SPECIFIED 8/27/2023

    Fix-02 faucet............29  Draft

    Fix-02 water filter.....30 TBD

     

    so how can that status and date table next to and in the same line as the item it describes. Thank you!!! This will make our life so much easier if we can do it. 

    James Gifford—NitroPress
    James Gifford—NitroPress
    Legend
    September 22, 2023

    Don't design tools in the field do this more automatically? Generating BOMs and other material lists, and linking them to specific detail drawings and pages? We have had some discussion here of BlueBeam and its erratic handling of PDFs because it's more optimized for large drawing files and the like — is that not a tool for this kind of catalogiing etc.?

     

    I'm sure you have your project and needs in hand, but I am curious as to why are you using ID to build this catalog and TOC.

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