How do I place two different heading styles in the same Table of Contents line?

[Bookmaker]

I am trying to make my TOC look like this:

1  This is what happens in chapter one          2
2  This is the name of chapter two               17
3  Chapter three heading                              32
4  You get the idea                                         78

However, using the video tutorial as a guide, all I can achieve is:

1                                                                         2
   This is what happens in chapter one           2
2                                                                       17
   This is the name of chapter two                 17
etc
etc

This is also one of the problems of Microsoft Word so I assume that Affinity Publisher, being a publishing tool, has a way of creating a proper book TOC.

Thank you in advance for your help.                          

[walt.farrell]

The "1" and "This is what happens in chapter one" would have to use the same paragraph text style.

You could separate them in the text with a Line Break (Shift+Enter, by default), and then set the TOC panel option to remove Line Breaks from the entry.

[Bookmaker]

Thank you for the prompt reply, Walt.

I attach a screenshot of the first page of a chapter. 'Chapter 2' is Heading 1 and 'Lost at sea' is a Heading 2. I can't see a way in which to implement what you say without completely changing the look of the page. Or, did I misunderstand what you meant?

 

Edited June 22, 2021 by Bookmaker

[walt.farrell]

You did not misunderstand, but your initial statement of what you wanted does not match that actual example. Therefore, my answer was the wrong one. Sorry; I should have asked for a screenshot before answering.

I don't think you can do what you want, except for one odd possibility that I will need to experiment with before saying more.

[Old Bruce]

Hi @Bookmaker,

You want something like this

Chapter 2 Lost at sea          3

Chapter 3 On an Island      17

Then the text will have to be like this

Chapter 2 [line return, not new paragraph]

Lost at sea [new paragraph]

 

And... Your heading for the Chapter 2 Lost at sea text will need to be in a paragraph style that has Initial words set to have a Bold, non italic, bigger font size.... etc with either a maximum word count of 2 (Chapter 2) or uses a line return as an end character for the Initial Words. Set up two Styles, one Paragraph style (named Chapter Headings) that looks like the text for Lost at sea and then make a Character style (named Initial Words Chapter Heading) which will have the necessary formatting to make the words look like Chapter 2. Remember to use the Line Return.

[Kendall]

I realize this is an old thread, but I want to add another way to accomplish this for anyone who, like me, is searching for a solution. It's not 100% eloquent, but it does work.

In my document, I have two paragraph styles that I want to appear in the TOC: Author and Title. I select both to be included in the TOC and for one (in my case Title), I de-select the option to include the page number. That way the page number only appears once for the Author, and for me this will result in a TOC that look like this:

Author    #
Titie

I can then go in and manually remove the return after the page number and replace it with a tab, resulting in a TOC entry that looks like this:

Author    #    Title

I can also set up the tabs in the TOC-1 Author and  TOC-1 Title styles so that the page number is always in position (right justified so that the final decimal always lines up) and the PS Title text is a left justified tab so that all titles start in the same position. This is a style of TOC that I inherited, so I want to keep it for this publication.

In another publication, I might have Author, Title     #

In that case, I would not have a page number for the Author paragraph in the TOC and I would have one for the Title. I would then replace the return with ", "

This solution does involve some manual manipulation of the TOC text, but it is actually similar to, yet much easier, than what I had to do in InDesign to achieve the same results.

The solution proposed by Old Bruce, above, may be better for some because the TOC could be generated automatically, but it would be tricker to get the effect you want on the page within the document. You could use character styles and have author and title (or chapter number and title) within the same paragraph, but there would still be some manual formatting to get the spacing to be what you want it to be. Reformatting the TOC as I described is probably as easy or easier. And it will work if you already created your heading styles in the document and are now trying to get the TOC to look the way you want it to.