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Hi, I'm trying to create a table of contents but InDesign is not picking up on all the paragraph styles throughout the book.
Here are the documents in the book panel:
And here are my TOC settings:
Each of the "book 1/2/3/4", "introduction", and "acknowledgements" documents should have many instances of these paragraph styles, but when I generate the TOC all I get is this:
One lonely instance in the acknowledgements.
So I tried adding my standard paragraph style to the TOC (which should make my TOC almost as long as the whole book) just as an experiment and again, InDesign only gave me instances of the chosen paragraph styles up to and including the acknowledgements document but nothing beyond.
Perhaps there is a way to ask ID to include all documents by default? It seems to be missing the bulk of my book--everything after the acknowledgements--in generating the TOC.
Stumped.
Hi Mike:
I specialize in long doc layout, and creating TOCs is something I am very familiar with. That said, I don't have a good answer for you, other than a vague suspicion of corrupt files. I'm not a fan of blaming it on corruption—it feels like a cop out—but I am unable to pinpoint the issue.
Things I wonder:
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Your setup looks correct.
~Barb
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Thanks Barb.
1) Yes, all documents are of the latest version (16.0.1 x64).
2) Titles are in order. I think I'd see these slight discrepancies in the "Other Styles" list, no? Don't seem to be any AFAIK.
3) The missing text doesn't show up in Story editor. Nop overset text per the little green dot icon at the bottom.
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Yes, you would see the duplicates listed under other styles. I don't see any other reason why it isn't working.
Are you comfortable sharing files with me? You can do this publicly with a link in a reply, or message me privately by clicking my name above and choosing message. I would need four files—the .indb book file, the toc .indd file, the frontmatter .indd file that is working correctly, and one .indd file that is not working. If there are security concerns, you can send a copy of that file with the contents removed, except for sample heads. You can put the file on dropbox (or other file sharing server) and send a link.
~Barb
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Ive sent a PM, thanks.
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Hi Mike:
I specialize in long doc layout, and creating TOCs is something I am very familiar with. That said, I don't have a good answer for you, other than a vague suspicion of corrupt files. I'm not a fan of blaming it on corruption—it feels like a cop out—but I am unable to pinpoint the issue.
Things I wonder:
I have tried many things to work this out, including:
The only oddity I uncovered is white underlining on the all of the paragraphs. I see why it is on for Book Title, but not sure why all paragraphs have it enabled. Removing it doesn't help, so just pointing it out. It isn't visible unless you pull the text frame onto the pasteboard.
Meanwhile, how to move on: when I save the acknowledgement chapter under a new name (book2.indd in my screenshot) and then copy and paste the content from book 1.indd into it, the table of contents works just fine and collects and displays the expected paragraphs. You can rebuild the book fairly quickly with this method.
I'll continue to puzzle over this, and if a lightbulb finally lights up over my head, I'll come back let you know.
~Barb
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Thanks for checking into it, Barb.
Re: your thoughts
Re: the white underlining, I didn't expect this to be on all styles. Thank you for pointing it out, I'm guessing it will cause me grief in my EPUB/Kindle conversion (everything underlined).
I appreciate you looking into this further.
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Hi Mike:
I suspect that the multiple conversions of the older files caused the issue. After this goes to print and you have some downtime, I would:
And we are always happy to help. Come back any time,
~Barb