TOC formatting is applying randomly

[klp002]

I'm creating a book in InDesign CC, and have set up the correct paragraph styles etc.

For some reason that I cannot for the life of me find out why (I've spent hours searching), the formatting is applying to only some of the TOC items, but not others.

See attached screenshot.....

The second and third items are the "non-conformers"....also any clues as to why some of the titles are being seperated? (the second item is The Heritage & History of the Australian Lowline - one item, not 4 as it currently sits). I can update these manually but of course, that means if I need to update the TOC I will have to do the changes every time I do...

Any help is greatly appreciated.

- K

[amaarora]

Hi,

Can you also add a screenshot of the Table of Contents dialog box.

-Aman

[klp002]

Sure!

[Anna Lander]

Hi,
this doesn't look like random.
Do these big lines originally have the same style as the small ones?
Is their Entry style the same as others?

Could you please check the original titles for the character style applied and tell us about the result? Character styles often provide some strange and unexpected issues.

[klp002]

Hi Anna,

yes, the two items which are showing at 36pt (its actually set to 12pt) are the same paragraph style in the document as other items listed in the contents yet displaying correctly. The font should also be black, numbers blue.....

The other issue with this, is even if I manually override it and correct the style, I’m still left with the line height spacing of a much bigger font size, that no matter WHAT I do, won’t shrink.

Its bizarre and doing my head in. 

Any help is is greatly appreciated..

- K

[Anna Lander]

share pls the indd file, I promise to not use it for anything but check and help

[Barb Binder]

Hi K:

As long as you have correctly mapped the paragraph style from the source files to the correct TOC style (which it looks like you are doing via your second screen shot) then I'd wager you have a character style assigned to several of the headings in the source files.

Try this:

1. Locate "ACLA Foundation Members" on page 27
2. Select the entire heading, including the ¶—triple or quadruple click with the Type tool, depending on if it wraps to a second line
3. Hold Alt (Mac: Option) and click on [None] in Window > Character Styles
4. Then navigate back to the TOC and update it.

Does that take care it? If so, repeat on the other troublesome headings.

~Barb

[klp002]

Hi Barb,

Nope, still there (and no character styles were applied). I have NO clue what is going on.

[klp002 · Accepted solution]

Ok so from your answer (thank you Barb!) I looked a little further.

Selected the problem headings in the document, right clicked on the Paragraph Style on the right-hand menu.

Clicked "apply style XXX & clear character styles"

Updated TOC and it's FIXED!!

THANK YOU!

[Barb Binder]

You are welcome. The issue you described was clearly caused by a character style—they get ported into the TOC. Glad you figured it out.

~Barb

[yotami]

Hey guys!
After a few years this problem still seem to lurk around...
Thank to you guys, I was able to solve it with your solution of clearing the character styles.
With that being said, every time I make an adjustment to the TOC, the whole list scrumbles again, thus making it basically into manual work in case I have even the smallest adjustment.
Excuse my English, as it's not the best and I hope that my problem and question was understandable enough.

Did you encounter the same problem  as well?
Is it recommended to just not use Character Styles for titles? we may never know...

[Willi Adelberger]

Besides the problem I see another cause for future problems: Always name the styles after their functionality, never include their typographic properties like size or font name into any style. If you change the appearance you have to change the names to and with changed names other related items are envolved to.

If you have functionality names it makes it easy to re-use some items from other documents with no or only some adaptions, even if the appearance is completely different, like tocs.

You will not have any need to reinvent everything again in a new document.

[klp002]

Great tip Willi!

I did actually have them all named "body text" "heading1" "captions" etc but in my efforts to fix whatever this issue was, I deleted all the styles and started from scratch (many hours of frustration are showing in the style names). I'll keep it in mind for future.

- K