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Empty table of contents/ pages getting deleted

Explorer ,
Sep 01, 2023 Sep 01, 2023

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Hi, there. I have a book in InDesign 2023 with 4 documents in it. When I create the book's table of contents it's empty. And it gets worst, when I try to update it, file pages get deleted and all files's page numbering gets twisted.When I generate a single document file it's generated empty too.  Can you hep me fix this?

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Bug , How to , Performance

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

Explorer , Sep 18, 2023 Sep 18, 2023

UPDATE!

 

I contacted the Adobe support team via Twitter/X and shared my files with them. After their analysis, it turned out that my files where corrupted and they offered this solution:

 

"So we moved all the individual chapter files to new documents using the pages panel "Move page" option, created a new book, added those chapters, and imported all the paragraph styles. After that, we're able to generate the TOC correctly."

 

I just tried it and worked perfectly!

 

I'm keeping Laubender's answer as t

...

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Community Expert ,
Sep 01, 2023 Sep 01, 2023

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In the TOC generation window, did you check the 'Include book documents' checkbox?

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Explorer ,
Sep 01, 2023 Sep 01, 2023

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Yes I did, several times I tried. The only thing included in the table of contents is the title. I'm thining it is somethint related witha hidden frame with aniother table of contents like in this thread https://community.adobe.com/t5/indesign-discussions/table-of-contents-not-generated/td-p/10782826 Is there a way to find it?

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Community Expert ,
Sep 01, 2023 Sep 01, 2023

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Have you tried re-placing the TOC frame? Delete what's there (which should take care of any phantom or 'lost' frame as well), and re-drag the TOC frame at the time of update?


┋┊ InDesign to Kindle (& EPUB): A Professional Guide, v3.1 ┊ (Amazon) ┊┋

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Explorer ,
Sep 01, 2023 Sep 01, 2023

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just tried it and it continued generating an empty TOC

 

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Community Expert ,
Sep 01, 2023 Sep 01, 2023

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Andf you're positive you've actually included the correct paragraph styles?

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Explorer ,
Sep 01, 2023 Sep 01, 2023

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Screenshot 2023-09-01 at 15.18.54.png

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Explorer ,
Sep 01, 2023 Sep 01, 2023

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I'm sure

 

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Community Expert ,
Sep 01, 2023 Sep 01, 2023

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I wonder if the problem is the styles are in folders.

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Explorer ,
Sep 01, 2023 Sep 01, 2023

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They are. Let's try taking them out

 

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Explorer ,
Sep 01, 2023 Sep 01, 2023

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No, that didn't solve the problem either

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Community Expert ,
Sep 01, 2023 Sep 01, 2023

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Can you show us a screen shot of one of the paragraphs (selected) that is supposed to be included and the style actually applied to it, please.

I'm having trouble believing there could be any cause other than the wrong styles are applied.

Also, presuming that isn't the problem, have you tried running the files through .idml yet?

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Explorer ,
Sep 01, 2023 Sep 01, 2023

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I saved them as idml, saved the idml as new indd and added them to a new book. Didn't work.Screenshot 2023-09-01 at 16.51.48.png

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Community Expert ,
Sep 01, 2023 Sep 01, 2023

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OK, we now have two threads here on the forum with this problem.

I wonder if you've found a bug.

What OS and version of InDesign?

Waht happens if you roll back a version?

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Explorer ,
Sep 04, 2023 Sep 04, 2023

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I'm using InDesing 18.5 on Ventura 13.3.1. Just tried it on InDesign 17.3 and got the same negative results.

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Explorer ,
Sep 04, 2023 Sep 04, 2023

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I want to thank everyone for ther contributions on this issue. Unfortunately, I couldn't solve it and the document's delivery deadline was friday. As hyperlinks or pdf markers where dispensable, I created the TOC in the oldest fashion way by typing everything. I contacted Adobe's support team via X/Twitter and as soon as they help me solving this I'll share it here in case it's useful to anyone else.

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Community Expert ,
Sep 04, 2023 Sep 04, 2023

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Let's back up anyway and start with a basic question: have you ever successfully created a Book TOC? Or is this your first project using one?

 

I just suggest that because it could lead to an assumption on one end or the other that is masking an obvious problem. Many times, these frustrating discussions come down to one wrong setting that the OP didn't know to check and the expertise here didn't think to ask about. 😛


┋┊ InDesign to Kindle (& EPUB): A Professional Guide, v3.1 ┊ (Amazon) ┊┋

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Explorer ,
Sep 04, 2023 Sep 04, 2023

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I've being designing books for almost 13 years, generating TOC and some indexes when needed, and this is the first time something like this has happened to me.

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Community Expert ,
Sep 04, 2023 Sep 04, 2023

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Okay. But does that include the Book method as well as individual file TOCs? You don't say, and while it should be a straightforward step to go from one to the other, it does have some subtle kinks to it. I'll grant you know enough to be contributing to a solution here, though. (Some novices can overlook the most exasperating things...)

 

I am not sure there's any way to nail this down, with any reasonable expenditure of time and discussion, without another pro actually looking at your files, which you may or may not want to allow. I know some such cases have been solved when one of the real tech/structure pros here find a glitch or settings problem that would elude books of analysis.


┋┊ InDesign to Kindle (& EPUB): A Professional Guide, v3.1 ┊ (Amazon) ┊┋

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Community Expert ,
Sep 05, 2023 Sep 05, 2023

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Hi @Juan Mutante 26 ,

an empty TOC and an empty main story of text frames threaded throughout a document could happen if you update the TOC when the TOC's story's last text frame is threaded to the main story's first text frame. So the main story's story becomes the TOC's story. Please check, that the TOC's story's text frames are not threaded to the main story.

 

NOTE 1:

The following happens if you update a TOC with the menu command:

[1] The TOC's story will be deleted.

[2] The new TOC's contents will be generated.

So if the TOC's story in [1] is actually the main one that is threaded from page to page and it will be deleted in step [1] of building an updated TOC, there is nothing to generate in step [2], because all contents is removed.

 

NOTE 2: Pages will be removed if they do not have any contents ( empty text frames ) on them if your preferences are set by default for automatically adding or removing pages depending on length of the contents that is running through the document.

 

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )

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Explorer ,
Sep 18, 2023 Sep 18, 2023

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UPDATE!

 

I contacted the Adobe support team via Twitter/X and shared my files with them. After their analysis, it turned out that my files where corrupted and they offered this solution:

 

"So we moved all the individual chapter files to new documents using the pages panel "Move page" option, created a new book, added those chapters, and imported all the paragraph styles. After that, we're able to generate the TOC correctly."

 

I just tried it and worked perfectly!

 

I'm keeping Laubender's answer as the correct answer because I believe threading TOC frames to text frames and then trying to generate new TOC was the cause of the file corruption. 

 

Thank you all for your help and I hope this info will be helpful in the future.

 

Screenshot 2023-09-18 at 10.19.42.png

 

 

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Community Expert ,
Sep 18, 2023 Sep 18, 2023

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Great. Thanks for the update.

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Community Expert ,
Sep 18, 2023 Sep 18, 2023

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@Juan Mutante 26 said:

"I'm keeping Laubender's answer as the correct answer because I believe threading TOC frames to text frames and then trying to generate new TOC was the cause of the file corruption. "

 

Hi @Juan Mutante 26 ,

hm. I unmarked my answer as the correct one. Simply "merging" two stories into one would not corrupt a document.

Instead I marked your answer as the "correct" one.

 

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Expert )

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