Table of contents stopped working

[Blain17536874lgd6]

I'm doing a table of contents for a book. This used to work, I've used it many times. Now it will create a TOC the first time, but if I try again, it only generates a document with one word "contents." Also, although I use the font New Order throughout the book, When I create a TOC Style, it will not show New Order as available.

Also, when I try to create a new TOC, it only does an Update, and nothing happens. I've tried on two different computers with both the latest version of InDesign (17.4) and also an older version-17.1.

I have also imported a TOC from an older book. It works the first time, but then experiences the same problems as above.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

A subtle point of TOC "styles" — which are complete schema definitions, not really "styles" as the term is used elsewhere in ID — is that any changes made to a style are only used once, the first time, and then lost. If you set up a TOC model and generate the TOC, it will work fine. Go back and generate it again... and much of the setup and changes will be missing.

You MUST define a custom style and save it each and every time you make any changes to avoid this silent glitch.

Not sure if that's what's causing your problem, but it's the first thing I can suggest.

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[Blain17536874lgd6]

Thanks, I'm going to try that.

[Peter Spier]

Not clear to me if the rest of the text is disappearing whne you try to update the TOC.

If it is it means you've put the TOC in a frame threaded to the text. You must put the TOC in its own story (frame not threaded to other content).

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Good point. Unless the layout is very complex, I make it a practice always to drag out a new text frame when I change a TOC. (Updates will just use the existing frame.)

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