Ranking TOC

[Hannah_Rotwild]

Good Morning, 

I'm struggeling with the ranking of my TOC. I have created Paragraphs with 'Heading 1' and 'Heading 2' in a book. If I create the TOC, it sets automatically Heading 2 higher than Heading 1; e.g.:

     Heading 2....2

     Heading 2....3

     Heading 2....4

     Heading 2....4

Heading 1 ...........4 

altough it should be: 

     Heading 2....2

     Heading 2....3

Heading 1 ...........4 

     Heading 2....4

     Heading 2....4

How can I set the priority of Heading 1 above Heading 2? Thanks in advance!

[StudioSm]

The TOC will normally create the lines in order of appearance in the book. So if you chapter starts with a paragraph styled with Heading 2, that is going to be the first line in your TOC. FrameMaker does not really care what you call your styles. Text in the TOC will come in the order of appearance in the book.

[frameexpert]

Also, if Heading 1 is in a table cell or in a separate text frame, it may not appear in the correct order in the TOC.

[Hannah_Rotwild]

Firstly thanks for the fast reply! Then, if I set the Heading 1 in a seperate frame above the Body text frame (where the Heading frame is located above the body frame), why is it still listed in the TOC below Heading 2. Is there a way to prioritise text frames?

[LinSims]

If I remember correctly, Frame generates all the TOC entries for one flow at a time per page. If you have your Heading 1 flow labeled A and your Body flow labeled B, I think it'll work.

Unless I've misremembered and what it actually does is collect all the TOC entries for flow A and then goes back for Flow B. But your description seems to indicate otherwise.

ETA: FM won't let you relabel a flow to an existing flow tag, so rename Flow A to Flow C (I think that's your body flow), then rename Flow B to Flow A. If you want you can then rename Flow C to Flow B, but as long as it follows A, you should be  okay.

[frameexpert]

You should try to keep everything in the same flow if you can. You can have separate text frames in the same flow, perhaps using a custom master page.

[LinSims]

Or that. 🙂

ETA: I was assuming they did have 2 separate flows given how their TOC was generating.

[frameexpert]

You are probably right Lin. Multiple flows are sometimes used if the user doesn't know how to split text frames, etc. I am not sure, but I think the main text flow on a page would be processed first and then other flows. That is probably why the Heading 1 are coming out after the Heading 2 paragraphs.

[LinSims · Accepted solution]

This is a mistake I have made when I was but a baby template creator. 😄

ETA: @Hannah_Rotwild , if you decide to do two text frames instead of two flows, as suggested by Rick (and really, it's best practice), you will need to recreate the master page from scratch. You must put the text frame for your Heading 1 on the page first, then put the text frame for your body of text after it. Make sure that the two frames autoconnect. Label the page something like First Page and make sure you don't use it for more than the first page, because things will get weird if you do.

[Hannah_Rotwild]

Thanks for that, the flow was indeed the issue! 

[CTAS]

I have worked on files that others created for List of effective pages have flow issues also. Another way to correct it if you don't want to recreate a master page is to:

• Deleted the title block on the master page,
• Copy the body text frame and paste a copy moving it down on the page.
• Resize and move the original to the position for the title block
• Move the second copy to the position for the body, making sure it is below the title block in the flow
• If the body text frame was a multiple column property, change it to one column and format as the original title block text frame.

I hope this is useful to others as it worked for us.