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keithconover
Inspiring
January 27, 2024
Answered

Table of Contents: One line per page

  • January 27, 2024
  • 4 replies
  • 1438 views

I had a nice Table of Contents style for the chapters of my book. I am not sure what happened, but I am now getting one TOC line per page. I have tried setting all of the options in the three paragraph styles (TOC H1 Entry, TOC H2 Entry, TOC H3 Entry) to the most basic ones. Basic 11/12 text. Everything in Indents and Spacing zeroed out (I can put the proper indents back in after fixing the underlying problem). No Keep options.  I used to have "Between Entry and Number" as ^Y (tab) but changed it to ^M. All to no avail, still just one entry per page. These chapters are part of a book file, and I had the chapter's page numbers with a prefix, so that Chapter 1 started with 1–1, Chapter 2 started with 2-1 and so forth. But when I took off the prefix numbering for the chapters so there are no prefixes and still, only one line per page. I spent about 45 minutes searching the forum and trying different options and I have finally given up and I'm asking for help. Help!

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Correct answer Peter Spier

Go back and look at your Keep Options for the TOC Style. It's set to start paragraph on next page....

4 replies

Peter Spier
Community Expert
Peter SpierCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
January 29, 2024

Go back and look at your Keep Options for the TOC Style. It's set to start paragraph on next page....

keithconover
Inspiring
January 29, 2024

"WRONG LEVER!!!! (Why DO they have that lever?)" —The Emperor's New Groove

I must have accidentally clicked that option at some point. I have no idea why anyone would want a TOC entry to use that option.

Thankyouthankyouthankyou!

Robert at ID-Tasker
Legend
January 29, 2024

It's not TOC option - it's ParaStyle option.

 

Barb Binder
Community Expert
Community Expert
January 29, 2024

Hi Keith:

 

I'm happy to take a look. You can put the TOC on dropbox or similar and share a link here (public) or message it to me directly (private).

 

~Barb

~Barb at Rocky Mountain Training
keithconover
Inspiring
January 29, 2024

Thanks for all the thoughts. I hope if anyone else has a similar problem that they find the debugging suggestions in this thread helpful. I couldn't find any problems with the text box.

I am beginning to think it might be a corrupted Table of Contents style and I would have to start a new one from scratch. But yinz (or if you're from New York, youse, or from the South, y'all, or from the deep South, alla y'all) know more than I do about InDesign which is why this forum is such a great place.

The file is publically available at http://www.conovers.org/ftp/AppSAR-Source-Files/.

The direct link is http://www.conovers.org/ftp/AppSAR-Source-Files/AppSAR-1-Short-Term-Survival.indd.

keithconover
Inspiring
January 29, 2024

Or maybe it has something to do with this chapter being part of a book panel?

James Gifford—NitroPress
Legend
January 27, 2024

Nothing about the export process is likely to have much to do with this; it's the result, as individual text lines with a particular Paragraph Style applied, that's causing this problem.

 

The only reason text content breaks out to "one line per page" is either an erroneous Keep option or (as Scott suggests) spacing.

 

Try this: select all of a generated TOC (Ctrl-A) and apply your Body paragraph style. I'll bet the whole TOC shows up as contiguous lines, even if the formatting isn't what you want. If you have more than one TOC style (as you note), try applying each one to all TOC lines like this. That might isolate one problem style.

 

So now, you need to look closely at the Keep Options and spacing for all your TOC styles until you spot the glitch. Posting a screen shot of at least the primary or 'parent' style's Keep panel might help.

keithconover
Inspiring
January 29, 2024

Good thought, thank you!

 

However, I changed the entire Table of Contents to [Basic Paragraph] and the problem persists. Sigh.

Robert at ID-Tasker
Legend
January 29, 2024

Maybe there is something on the Master with TextWrap leaving only enough space for a single line? 

 

Scott Falkner
Community Expert
Community Expert
January 27, 2024

Have you looked at Space Above or Space Below? That might be set to something very large. Also, in Keep Options, look to see if the paragraph style is set to start a new page. If you are willing to share the file (perhaps with important text removed) we can examine it and find the problem.

keithconover
Inspiring
January 29, 2024

Good thought, but they're both set to zero spacing.