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kellyp91276472
kellyp91276472
Participating Frequently
June 1, 2018
Answered

InDesign TOC - Formatting Being Picked Up From Chapters / Headings

  • June 1, 2018
  • 2 replies
  • 7425 views

Hi,

I'm trying to create an Indesign TOC which displays in a specific format depending on which paragraph style it is picking up (chapter or heading). I've created styles within my TOC, which are based on a basic paragraph style which is contained outside of the TOC group. The TOC chapter / heading paragraph styles then contain a slight variation in tab and font. Whilst these displayed as expected, as soon as i update the contents page, all of this is lost and the various headings/chapters revert to the formatting used within the document.

I have a previous document i've based this off which shows it working, and i can't see any differences in the set-up. When i tried copying the old TOC style into my new document, the same issue arises. This doesn't include nesting, etc, which I don't really know how to use.

If anyone knows where i'm going wrong, please let me know.

Correct answer hammer0909

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ee5xc44wgw3gj31/AAB-iDF8Dg4Gn4lJuss-6ZaEa?dl=0

Design and Access Folder  I've packed it here. Thanks in advance.


I think the problem is that you're leaving InDesign to its own devices by not defining a style to apply to the Title of the TOC. If you notice, the title is coming in with a numbered format (which I don't think you want), and it actually has no style applied to it. So somewhere it's grabbing that formatting (possibly from the default text of that frame). Anyway, I assigned a style of Headings to the Title although you could assign whichever style you wish, and now when I update the TOC, you get the appearance that you see in the second figure below with no overrides and expected formatting.

2 replies

Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com
Legend
June 1, 2018

Glad to know it's now working.

Whew!

|    Bevi Chagnon   |  Designer, Trainer, & Technologist for Accessible Documents ||    PubCom |    Classes & Books for Accessible InDesign, PDFs & MS Office |
hammer0909
Community Expert
hammer0909Community Expert
Community Expert
June 1, 2018

When you're defining your table of contents, make sure to click on the More Options button. Then for each style that you add in the "Styles in Table of Contents" section make sure you choose the entry style that you want applied to the text in the Table of Contents. It sounds to me like it's set to "Entry Style" which is why it wants to keep reverting back to that appearance when you update.

kellyp91276472
kellyp91276472Author
Participating Frequently
June 1, 2018

Thanks so much for the quick response Chad.

That's instantly worked for my headings, but for the chapters has updated it to 'TOC Chapters+', it offers me the alt click option to clear the override, but i need it to not pick this up in the first place. This is a paragraph style which contains an auto-numbering list. Possibly i'm missing something obvious again, but it appears in the same way as your screenshot, and definitely has the correct formatting on the TOC Chapters.

Scott Citron
Scott Citron
Legend
June 1, 2018

Kelly, did you try clearing the + override in the TOC Chapters paragraph style first, before running the TOC? Make sure that no character style is unknowingly applied to the para style, then try updating or replacing the existing TOC.

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