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@MikeTO, I think I get what you are doing. I can definitely improve my workflow from what you've given me. But, we've identified at least two areas for improvement with the software: More text fields would be helpful, such as Chapters. Sections need some work to be useful. (Or, if chapters work for this, should sections just be eliminated?) Now it's arguable that those two things need to be addressed, because as posted above this software is only $50. But, if it's easy maybe they'll fix it?

Sorry, you posted while I was typing. I didn't know you could apply two master pages. Interesting. Just to be clear, though, your chapter titles aren't linked to the text in the footer, correct? With all this being said, what is the use of sections? Seems like they may be more trouble than they're worth. Thanks for the help, and I think I have a better workflow going forward. Have a great weekend!

@MikeTO, Okay I think I see what you may be doing. I created separate master pages for the chapters and manually put the chapter title in the footer. But, that means the actual chapter name that appears in the TOC isn't linked to the master page footer chapter name. Overall, I think this is a better solution than using sections, but I'm now thinking the best solution would be to add more text fields such as chapter names? If anyone wants to see how Mike's solution works, see attached file and cut and paste text to see how the pages update within the chapters correctly. Chapter Test.afpub

Interesting. So the master page includes the chapter name? But then it's not available to the TOC? I'm not sure I understand the terminology or how a "story" works...Time to do some research. If you've got a minimal working environment you can post, I'd appreciate it. My initial guess is that you flow each chapter, but the chapters aren't linked. I guess that could work, but again I'm not sure how the TOC would work. This program is pretty foreign to me and I'm learning as I go. So far, it's pretty impressive for how inexpensive it is.

Thanks @Dan C, absolutely no reason to apologize. To put this into perspective, this software only costs $50. So, if it has a few shortcomings, I can work around them if I have to. I'll keep my fingers crossed that they can implement it as above. But, I'm sure they would've if they could have easily done it that way. Bonus points if they add section level total page counts as text fields. That way they can be included in the TOC.

Maybe I'm doing this wrong or misunderstanding the way that Publisher works, but according to the help, you assign sections to page ranges. Can I not set a section in the document to the content and if I add or subtract content anywhere in the document causing the sections to shift pages have the software automatically update the page ranges for the sections? Seems like this should happen automatically to me, or maybe I'm dense or missing something. I tried to search for anyone else having this problem and didn't find anyone else having the same problem (found similar, but not the same). Would anyone else benefit from it working how I believe it should? I figured I'd get some feedback before suggesting a change to the way the software works.

Thanks @MikeTO, That's exactly what I was looking for! I knew there had to be a way to do it.

So, I think I fixed it by re-applying the Master Page. But, I'm still curious how this happened and if there's another way to fix it?

For whatever reason I can't seem to delete this picture frame. I can select it, but nothing happens when I hit delete and the "Cut" is grayed out in the right click menu. I have searched all over the UI for a lock or something, but I haven't been able to figure it out. Anyone have any idea what I'm missing? Editing this post to add that I found the item in the layers panel and it's not locked, but I still can't delete it from there. I'm trying to figure out what these red bars mean, it seems that this frame is different from the other elements: