Is there a workaround to not being able to put variables in TOC entries?

Many publications include the section number in their page-number formats. This appears to be impossible in InDesign in 2026.

The result is that we must manually edit the TOC-entry styles in every document. And then, if we sync our book without remembering to disable TOC-style syncing, every TOC in the book is now wrong and we have to manually go through dozens of documents and fix every TOC style by hand.

Has anyone devised a workaround?