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Automated table of contents: inserting spaces between certain lines

Enthusiast ,
Mar 31, 2021 Mar 31, 2021

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Hi all! I have created a table of contents for an InDesign document that can automatically be updated. It's very handy! But... my client now wants blank lines in between sections. And I can't for the life of me figure out how to add in those spaces. I've tried everything I can think of. Let me know if you know how to do this! I imagine it's a matter of creating a new style, but I couldn't get it to work. I'm new to this automatic TOC thing, so I probably am just not understanding. Anyway, thanks for any help you can give me. I'm attaching an example of what I'm looking to do. 

 

example.jpg

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Community Expert ,
Mar 31, 2021 Mar 31, 2021

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You just have to add a space after on the 4th and the 9th paragraphs. No need to create a different style.

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Enthusiast ,
Mar 31, 2021 Mar 31, 2021

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Oh, sorry. I didn't explain this well enough. These reports are several hundred pages long. They are updated a lot and change report to report. So I'd rather have it automated... if at all possible. 

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Community Expert ,
Mar 31, 2021 Mar 31, 2021

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A typical table of contents is going to pull in several different paragraph styles: titles, head1s and head2s, for example.

 

If you have a section title that you are pulling in, add the spacing above value to its TOC style. 

If not, you are going to need a specific style to add the spacing values to. You can add it in the body of the document and make it look just like all of the other titles. But it would need to have a unique style name.

 

~Barb 

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Enthusiast ,
Mar 31, 2021 Mar 31, 2021

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I do have a title style I'm pulling in... and I tried adding in a space after... but it ignored it... when I updated the TOC, it didn't include it. It must be something in the TOC style vs. a normal paragraph style...

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Community Expert ,
Mar 31, 2021 Mar 31, 2021

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In a generated TOC, you want map the styles you are pulling from the document to TOC-specific styles. For example, if the TOC is pulling in Title, create a new style called TitleTOC or TOCTitle (the name doesn't matter). Map Title to TitleTOC and add the space before to TitleTOC.

 

~Barb 

 

toc.png

 

toc2.png

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Explorer ,
Feb 02, 2022 Feb 02, 2022

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Hi, this is so close to what I need, however, I'm running into a problem because the Space Before in essence adds space after because my back matter all uses the same paragraph style and I only want the extra space before the first item in the back matter. I want separation between "Start Walking" and "Acknowledgements." 

XtinaHowell_0-1643811833706.png

If I update the paragraph style for the back matter TOC text, I end up with spaces between each as shown:

XtinaHowell_2-1643812118318.png

 

 

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Explorer ,
Feb 04, 2022 Feb 04, 2022

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I ended up making a new chapter heading paragraph style between the end of the book and the back matter but just had a blank space to force the extra space in the table of contents. Not the most elegant solution, but it worked!

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