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andyt49051685
andyt49051685
Inspiring
September 25, 2017
Répondu

Table of Contents update deletes all text

I have created several 30 page files from a 150 page book, but the TOC in my smaller files refuses to update. It only deletes all the text. Curiously it does not delete imported graphics. I have tried to deal with this by changing Paragraph details and TOC details etc to no effect. Deleting the rogue TOC does not improve anything. Any ideas?

Ce sujet a été fermé aux réponses.
Meilleure réponse par andyt49051685

Hi Andy:

I got it working, but it was so mysterious. I was able to copy the content to a new file and it worked right away. So I went back to your file and was able to stop it from deleting the content (by removing replace TOC), but the TOC wouldn't grab any content. I finally removed your custom TOC style from Layout > Table of Contents Styles so that I could start over, and it worked perfectly. While I'm glad it is now working, I can't tell you specifically what was wrong. I looked closely at the before and after and couldn't identify anything.

I'm guessing you can recreate this on your own, but I'm going to put the file I created back up on dropbox for you. I see that you are using an earlier version than CC 2017, so I'll save mine as an .idml file. If you want to use mine, just open it, and save it as a normal .indd file.

Dropbox - AndyTOC.idml

~Barb


Thanks a million for that Barb, I am seriously impressed at the speed of your resolving this. You process seems obvious, but I hadn’t pinpointed it . The click seems to be in the custom TOC style. Yours presumably is the app default. Ill work on that as a basis.

Adobe took my payment in May they should have sent 2017 to download, I;’ll chase that up.

Thanks again for your very prompt and successful help

andyT

2 commentaires

John Mensinger
Community Expert
John MensingerCommunity Expert
Community Expert
September 25, 2017

Historically, this happens when your TOC lives in a frame that is threaded with subsequent text frames in the document. To keep your TOC live and update-friendly, it's best to set it up in a stand-alone, un-threaded frame.

A side note I'd add is that I also usually set my TOC frame to auto-size (height-only) to prevent overset.

andyt49051685
andyt49051685Auteur
Inspiring
September 25, 2017

Thanks john for the reply. I had had a problem with threading as I am using a large number of imported images. I have unthreaded everything to do those repairs, so I don't think that is now triggering anything. It may well have done previously, and I value the use of threaded and unthreaded frames doing different jobs. One of the combinations in the TOC dialog box gives you the TOC text on a loaded cursor.

andyt49051685
andyt49051685Auteur
Inspiring
October 2, 2017

It took me way longer than I expected it to take!

If you have a CC subscription—and it sounds like you do—you can upgrade to the current version in the CC Desktop App or in InDesign by choosing Help > Updates.


Thanks Barb the TOC styles seem to have been unreliable, maybe, so the default is safer. I've changed that and saved, and everything seems to work - Hooray and Thanks, problem solved
I'll get the CC2017 now

cheers aT

    amaarora
    amaarora
    Inspiring
    September 25, 2017

    Hi,

    What happens when you uncheck the replace existing TOC option from the toc dialog box?

    -Aman

    andyt49051685
    andyt49051685Auteur
    Inspiring
    September 25, 2017

    Thanks for the reply. I tested the 'replace existing TOC' box and it did make a difference. The change was that the text was not deleted, but there was no Table of Contents. Only its title appeared ('contents')

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