Table of Contents - wrong numbering

[moegerbyte]

I'm in really big trouble here. I'm supposed to hand in a ~200 pages thesis on monday and my TOC won't work at all: Some entries just get sorted to the end for absolutely no (apparent) reason.

The entries on page XI "Einleitung" and on page 21 "Exposition" use the exact same paragraph style as the entries on page 93, 139 and 187 and yet these three (and others if I include more levels) get sorted in the back. Note the last six entries in the picture which are supposed to be somewhere else, despites ID allocating the right page numbers to them automatically:

• None of the text entries that get sorted wrong (nor the entries that get sorted right) are linked in the actual story which includes all text.
• There are three sections in the document: small roman letters i-ix, roman capital letters X-XIX and all of the remaining pages 20-~200 - so it can't be a problem with sections, right?
• I tried creating a new TOC-style from scratch and the same thing happens again

• My paragraph styles look like this (basically: H0 - H6 hierarchy with "sonatentitel" being fancy decorations)

Please help me, I'm out of options here. 😞

[moegerbyte]

For better visibility I'm uploading an image that depicts the different paragraph styles in more detail:

Thanks a bunch in advance! 

[Derek Cross]

Check out these online video tutorials on creating a ToC with InDesign with Linkedin Learning (you can get 30-days free access):

https://www.linkedin.com/learning/search?keywords=create%20a%20toc%20in%20indesign

Whatever you do, make sure you have backup copies of your thesis stored internally and externally.

[moegerbyte]

Thank you for the effort Derek. However seeing as this is coming from a community expert, I don't think posting a link to a basic "how-to"-tutorial on a pay-to-play page is an appropriate answer to a very specific question in a user forum. I unflagged your post as "correct answer".

[Barb Binder]

That's very odd.

Can you show us a screen shot of page 92-93 with the Pages panel open? Before you take it, enable View > Extras > Show Text Threads and select the frame on page 93 so we can see how it is linked.

And also, what does the Preferences > General > Pages menu show: Absolute or Section numbering?

~Barb

Edit: I understand the panic with your rapidly approaching deadline, but if we can't figure it out in time, you can always manually edit the TOC. One way or the other, you'll make the deadline.

[moegerbyte]

Thank you for your motivating reply, Barb and thanks to IDEAS-Training and Willi_Adelberger!
First of all: The deadline went ok and I even printed and had five beautiful prints bound in books on time. (:

@Barb: The numbering in Preferences > General > Pages menu was set to 'section numbering', because preceding the actual thesis (numbered 16-202) I had the university's preface with a second set of page numbers (i-ix) and a personal introduction with a third one (X-XV).

Following your advice, I double checked the linking of text frames and tried to eliminate errors first. In a second step I linked all the headlines into a second, sort of parallel story, but for whatever reason this had exactly zero impact on the sorting of my TOC. (I really don't get it, even now.)

SOLUTION:
My solution to the problem was to link all text frames together (or 'threading' together the two parallel stories by hand, respectively)

I then started at point zero, beginning with a compeltely new TOC-style and creating a second set of paragraph styles for the TOC. I left out a lot of lower levels, because time was running out. The outcome can be seen in the second image:

Speculating about the reasons for this extremely unnerving and irrational behaviour I can only assume that the problem was something with my paragraph styles. Seeing that neither linking the headlines into their own story helped (the position of the headlines in the TOC wouldn't change at all) nor putting all text frames into a single thread of frames / story, this is my only explanation, because the sorting would still happen in the same way after I put everything into one text flow (as suggested by @IDEAS-Training).

If anyone still wants to give it a guess, I'm totally up for trouble shooting as I'm really interested in understanding the problem! 😄

[Creamer Training]

Could it be that the entries are in separate text flows? Another option is the text flow is out of order. 

The main heading (in all caps) is the primary sorting; the secondary heading will show up under whatever primary heading the flow dictates. I suspect a text flow issue. Go to View>Extras>Show text threads and select the text frames with the Selection tool to see the flow.

[moegerbyte]

Thanks for your help! Please see my extensive response to Barb's post for details!

I even tried to create two seperate stories by linking all the headlines in another story, but the logic applied to the sorting of the entries in the TOC did not change. It would've been logical if all entries of the first story preceded the entries from the second story, but the order of entries was completely random until I linked everything into a single story and created new TOC-Header styles.

[Willi Adelberger]

ich vermute, Du hast unterschiedliche Textabschnitte. Zuerst arbeitet InDesign im IHV den ersten Textabschnitt ab, dann den nächsten. So kommt es anscheinend zu dieser Unlogik, ist aber logisch.

[moegerbyte]

Danke für Ihre Antwort! Ich habe auf einen der anderen Posts ausführlich geantwortet, aber möchte kurz beantworten, dass die Textabschnitte offenbar nicht das Problem waren. Ich habe zuerst alle Textfelder in zwei "Stories" zusammengehängt und das IHV aktualisiert, aber das selbe Ergebnis bekommen - also auch nach dieser, eigentlich sehr logischen Logik, nicht (wie erwartet) zwei nummerierte Blocks im IHV, die nacheinander und nach Story sortiert aufgelistet werden, sondern weiterhin die selben Einträge am Ende wie vorher.