Table of Contents Title not Showing Style Chosen

[MichaelSiggers]

Hi

I am fairly new to InDesign and am trying to create a Table of Contents.

I have created a Paragraph Style with Large text, in bold, callled 'Table of Contents Heading'.

If I create some text using this paragraph style it shows exactly as I want.

However, when I try to create a Table of Contents, and instruct InDesign to use this for the Title Style, it just shows a basic White Text. I have attached  a couple of marked up screenshots showing the Table of Contents with the wrong Title Style and odd objects, and also a screen shot of the TOC Settings.

The Green shows the Parapgraph Style in a normal Text Box, all Good.

The Red shows the TOC Title which should look the same as the text circled in Green.

The Orange shows items I have no idea where they have come from.

Nothing I try makes any difference. If I double click into the Table of Contents and select the text, it states that it is in the Style I want, but the Font size and all other attributes are wrong.

Also, the Table of Contents has some odd character in which I do not know where they have come from.

Any help would be appreciated.

Kind regards

Mike

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS · Accepted solution]

It's hard to see what's going on in your screen capture with white type on a light background, but I suspect something is going on with your styles. With the selection tool, deselect everything and see what your Character style panel is set to--it should be None.

Without looking at your document, this is what a typical TOC format should look like:

[MichaelSiggers]

Thank you @Dave Creamer of IDEAS 

You hit the nail on the head with Character Style.

Bit of background. I am using a Template to create the work I need and the template was issued from elsewhere, from a company I freelance for.

For some reason it was applying Character Styles. I set this to none and the Title is now workinng OK.

Just need to figure out where this stray line is coming from. There's something called 'v' on page 1 but I can not see anything.

Mike

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

This is a "feature" that affects everyone at some point. If you change a setting without anything selected, it becomes the default in that document. The way to get out of it is to deselect everything and put the setting back the way you want them. Common settings affected are Paragraph styles, Character styles, Text Wrap, Effects. 

[MichaelSiggers]

Thank you so much for your help. Really appreciated.

Making progress. Slowly, but in a positive way.

Mike

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@MichaelSiggers

Just to add / clarify what Dave said - if you, by accident, leave some Character Style selected / "active" - it will become applied to any text generated by InDesign - TOC / Index - even if in the settings you've selected some CharStyle(s) - InDesign will use this currently active CharStyle to apply everywhere else.

And to add / clarify even more - a lot of settings you can set "as default" for new documents - if you set those settings WITHOUT any document(s) open.