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Rearranging the order of entries on a Table of Contents?


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I am currently doing work for a client who insists on having 2 separate tables of contents. One being the normal kind where it shows the entries of the client's work in the order they appear, and then a second one where entries are grouped by themes. So it is kind of like an index but not, since an index auto-generates based on presence of keywords.

So the question I have is, when Publisher generates a Table of Contents, is there a feature or tool I can use to rearrange the order of entries and break them up into subgroups (they need subheadings of the themes)? I note that currently if I manually try to change things, it reverts to the auto-generated state as soon as I hit "Update Table of Contents".

If worst comes to worst, after absolutely ensuring that the rest of the book is "set in stone" so to speak and I am absolutely sure the page numbers will not be affected, I suppose I can just copy the text in the table of contents and mess around with it.

Any thoughts on the best way to go about this would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for reading!

 

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A TOC in Publisher is strictly based on the page order of the included headings, with headings on page 1 appearing before headings on page 2, etc. Then within a page it is largely based on:

  1. The order of the Text Frames within the Layers panel. Headings in lower layers appear before headings in higher layers.
  2. And within a single frame, headings higher in the frame appear before headings lower in the frame.

(Pinned text frames add further complications.)

There are no functions to do what your client wants with a TOC in Publisher.

If they do not also want an Index I think you could use the Index functions to do it. That way you would not have to construct it completely by hand at the end. I'll say more on that later after a bit of experimentatiion.

 

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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Having experimented: yes, you can use an Index to get what your client wants for the second kind of "TOC". Remember, though, that a Publisher document can only contain one index.

If that seems useful to you, here is an example page with a normal TOC and then the same information supplied as an Index:

image.png.8e5018e39d6e43bc67b856035172adff.png

(You can get rid of the F and V headings by deselecting "Include Section Headings" in the Index Options.

Here's what the Index panel looks like, with those headings included:
image.png.6819971f415853f38fab18298c6a9b34.png

 

To do this, I used the following steps for each heading:

  1. Added the heading text in the heading style I wanted.
  2. Selected and copied the heading text.
  3. Added an Index Mark at the beginning of the heading.
  4. Step 3 caused the index mark dialog to pop up. In that dialog, I pasted the full text over the one word index entry that was there. I then selected (or created by typing into the box) the Parent Topic (Fruits, Vegetables) to use.

When done, I inserted the Index where I wanted it. If things move around later, or items are added/deleted, just use the TOC panel to update the TOC, and the Index panel to update the Index, by clicking on their respective Update icons.

Edit: Sorry; forgot the sample file: TOC-Index-example.afpub

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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7 hours ago, Jessica Choi said:

a second one where entries are grouped by themes.

You would be better served by making a separate ToC for each of the Themes and deleting, by hand, those entries which do not belong. It isn't automatic but it will in my opinion be quicker and easier. Just make sure to do this at the end of the project, not half way through.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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Interesting thought, @Old Bruce which triggered an idea to make it more automatic.

1. Define a separate heading style for the text associated with each theme. Thus, in my example above, with it's Fruits theme and Vegetables theme we could have text styles of Fruits Theme and Vegetables Theme. They could be based on a common theme for easy maintenance.

2. In the main TOC, select all the theme text styles and any others desired.

3. In the Fruits TOC select only the Fruits text styles.

4. Do the same for the Vegetables TOC, selecting the Vegetables text styles.

Benefit: self-maintaining, with no manual work at the end. 

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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