Formatting my ToC for a poetry book

[cynthiafWCLS]

Hello!

I am designing a poetry anthology, and I have my ToC set up to pick up the poet names and the titles with the page number that the poem starts on. 

On the book page, the poet's name is at the top of the page, followed by the title of the poem. 

In the ToC, the title of the poem goes first, and then the poet's name. 

My first entry on the ToC is showing up as just the poet name, and then a space and then the title of the first poem, but with the 2nd poet's name attributed to it. The page numbers are correctly aligned with the poem titles, but the poet names are all off by one. 

What am I missing? 

[John T Smith]

>What am I missing? 

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[cynthiafWCLS]

Oops, I apologize. This was my first time asking a question. I thought I was on the InDesign support page. I will certainly do that with any future questions. Thank you! 

[Willi Adelberger]

Instead of using the built in TOC functionality you might use cross references instead. It allows more flexibility, but is a little bit more work intensive.

[cynthiafWCLS]

Hmm, I haven't heard of "cross-references" in InDesign before, so I'm not sure where I'd start. The baseline adjustment listed in the other response did the job, though I'll have to add this to my list of things to learn about later. Thank you for your response. 

[Laubender · Accepted solution]

Hi Cynthia,

so if I do understand you right:

The order of the entries in the ToC should be:

Poem Title

Poet's Name

Where in the layout the order is:

Poet's Name

Poem Title

Poem

To achieve this you could switch the order of title and name paragraphs on the page.

To preserve the visual appearance of the layout you could use baseline shift for both paragraph styles for example.

To edit the entries best use the Story Editor window.

From my German InDesign:

See into my document and its ToC Style, also the applied paragraph styles and the Story Editor window that is showing the order of the paragraphs so the ToC could pick them up as you wish:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5z80pxrcwbonhwi/ToC-ChangedOrderOfEntries-2022.indd?dl=1

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

[cynthiafWCLS]

What amazing witchery this is! Thank you, Uwe. It took me another cup of coffee to understand all that you did, but I got there.

Cynthia