Indesign TOC doesn't display title as it should when manual font size changed are done

Question

Hi everyone,

I’m working on a book in InDesign and running into a problem with my Table of Contents (TOC).

Each recipe page has a title that uses a consistent paragraph style (e.g., “TitleStyle”). However, inside some of these titles, I’ve manually changed the font size of certain words or segments for visual reasons—without changing the paragraph style itself.

Now, when I generate the TOC using that paragraph style, the titles where I changed part of the font size manually do not show up as they should but instead keep that manually changed font.

I’ve already:

Confirmed that all the titles have the correct paragraph style applied
Tried manually changing the font size on the recipes or used a character style on the paragraph style
Made sure the TOC includes that paragraph style
Tried checking/unchecking “Include Style Overrides” in the TOC options
Ensured the TOC text box is large enough and the TOC is up to date
Export, save, change and all...

But the issue persists.

Is there a way to make the TOC ignore manual character formatting (like font size changes) ?

I joined pictures so you'll understand better

Thanks in advance!

Joel Cherney · Accepted Answer

I tried your technique, with clear override.

I joined a little video of the problem but to explain briefly : the clear override or clear all doesn't apply to all the text but just to the one I selected

If you put your insertion point into a paragraph that has overrides and then click Clear Overrides - or, as you have shown, click "Apply TOC, Clear Overrides" - then overrides will be cleared in that paragraph only. If you select text, it will clear overrides on all selected text. Since you have multiple levels of TOC, I'd suggest that you just whack Select All and then Clear Overrides. You don't need to Apply TOC, Clear Overrides because your TOC paragraph style is already applied.

Joel Cherney · Answer

Where are you finding this "Include Style Overrides" in the TOC options? Here are my TOC options, and I don't see that choice anywhere:

So I think "Hey, how are you building your TOC?" is the place to start.

The method I use to address this issue is to have created styles for the TOC, so if any overrides come in from the chapter titles when generating the table of contents, I can simply Select All and Clear Overrides from the flyout menu on the Paragraph Styles panel. (I actually have Clear Overrides assigned to a keyboard shortcut.)

However, I'm not convinced that you're using the TOC tool to make your TOC.

Honestly, I wonder how much of your question was written by you, and how much was written by AI.

Please—if French is your language, just post in French

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded