Having shorter TOC entries than in body of document

Question

My document has a list of figures at the start, created using the Table of Contents feature. Some of the figures have long captions in the body of the document but I would like to use a truncated caption in the TOC. Is this possible?

I have done this in Word by having a hidden paragraph marker at the appropriate point in my caption. The hidden paragraph marker does not print, so the caption in the document appears the full length. However, the caption in the TOC ends at the hidden paragraph marker (i.e. it is shorter as desired).

As a new InDesign user, I'm not sure how to achieve this.

I have tried placing the short TOC captions on a hidden layer. Then, in the main document, the long caption is created by inserting a cross reference to the TOC caption and adding some extra text. However, doing that for about 100 captions doesn't appeal.

Is there a better way?

Barb Binder · Accepted Answer

Hi @M Derek G:

InDesign will pull in whatever text is formatted with a specific paragraph style into the TOC, whether it is three words, thirty or three hundred. That's just how it works.

In addition to x-refs, another workaround is to put a shorter version in a text frame on the same page with different paragraph style. Most of the frame should be on the pasteboard with just a little overlap with the page (no text should be on the page). Then generate the TOC and pull in the secondary paragraph style.

I know people have requested to pull in text assigned a character style, but that is not available.

~Barb

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