Table of Contents only showing ONE line per text frame

[Loquos]

I am on MacOS 11.7, using Affinity Publisher 1.10.5.

I am working on a multi-page file that includes a Table of Contents. I reuse it every time the client requests a new publication. As I'm laying out the new articles, I periodically check the Preflight and update the TOC to ensure I haven't given any text element the wrong Paragraph/Character style.

As I was laying out one article, I noticed it was breaking the paragraphs oddly, so I delved into the respective settings to ensure nothing was amiss. I ended up resolving it by restarting the program (weird things happen with text frames sometimes, and I find a restart usually solves things). After this, I checked Preflight again and noticed it was complaining about a text frame overflow. I went to check the culprit, and it was the TOC text frame.

I have been trouble-shooting this for 40 minutes now. All tests have had the same result - this issue persists. I've tried new text frames on the same page, new text frames on a new page, resetting all of the TOC text formatting, and checking the Character and Paragraph style settings, as well as the Text Frame settings. Each time completely redoing the TOC. I cannot for the life of me figure out why it keeps doing this.

If I allow it to flow to a new text frame, it displays one line and then shoves all of the other text out of the text frame entirely. Each text frame containing the TOC displays one line only before shoving the rest of the text out of the text frame. All of the overflow text appears correct, spacing-wise.

Can someone please help shed some light on what is going on here?

 

[walt.farrell]

If you could share the .afpub file that would help.

Without that: you might try Text > Show Special Characters in case there's something odd in the text you're not expecting. Also, check the Text Style definitions for those lines in the TOC, and especially the Space After and Space Before settings (though there may be others that would explain it).

[Loquos]

Oh, I forgot to mention, the TOC was fine before the weird paragraph break thing happened and quitting the app to restart it. 

Sorry for the delay in the file share. I've made a copy of the file and removed the majority of the material minus the content that generates the TOC to attach it here without being quite so bulky.

I tried using the previous issue to refresh the TOC and get the same odd results, but they were fine.

British Society - Spotlight 133 TEST.afpub

[Loquos]

4 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

If you could share the .afpub file that would help.

Without that: you might try Text > Show Special Characters in case there's something odd in the text you're not expecting. Also, check the Text Style definitions for those lines in the TOC, and especially the Space After and Space Before settings (though there may be others that would explain it).

All those settings look correct to me. Paragraph breaks and tabs are where they should be. I even reset the styles and built them from scratch. 

What's so odd is that if it was a style setting, it should be apparent in something like 'start new paragraph in next column' but toggling any of the Flow settings gives me the same results.

[Loquos]

ok....

So, after toggling all the Flow settings off and on multiple times, setting them to one thing and then turning them back to the same as before ( without seeing any change to the text flow), I didn't realize I had the whole text frame selected when I went to select the TOC 1: Heading 1 style, and suddenly all the text popped up into the frame! Refreshing the TOC finally applied everything correctly!

So even though the Flow settings showed that nothing odd was being applied, and all was as it was before I toggled/threw random numbers into the "Keep with next" before setting it back to [No change], there was something weird going on there that was recognizing a setting that was being displayed as "same as [no change]". I don't have any style set to "start next paragraph in new column" so I have no idea where it thought it was pulling that info from.

[Callum]

Hi Loquos,

When I select the TOC and then set the flow option in the paragraph panel to start anywhere this appears to solve the issue unless I'm missing something.

C

[Loquos]

6 minutes ago, Callum said:

Hi Loquos,

When I select the TOC and then set the flow option in the paragraph panel to start anywhere this appears to solve the issue unless I'm missing something.

C

It had been set to "no change", because none of my other settings override the default - even the older issues/files have this "no change" setting for the Flow, and the TOC never did anything weird like this. 

So it must be a bug if it did it all of the sudden, correct? I had not messed with any of the TOC settings or any style related to the TOC styles before this suddenly happened.

[Old Bruce]

You have an override in the Paragraph/line/item De o Conselho ... 

[Callum]

Without a recipe to reproduce this setting being applied on its own it's hard to say if this is a bug or not unfortunately. 

 

EDIT: @Old Bruce to the rescue great catch!

[Loquos]

16 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

You have an override in the Paragraph/line/item De o Conselho ... 

Shouldn't clearing the styles reset this as well? It persisted even though I hit "reset formatting" and set things again, the way they should be. It wasn't until I recreated them AND toggled all of the Flow settings on and off again (and all of the numbers as well) then selecting the text frame and applying the Heading 1 style to the entire thing that it finally overrode the mysterious setting in the Heading 1 PT and fixed the issue.

And I never set it to "Start in Next Column" (or any style to "Start in Next Column") so how did it suddenly get there after I restarted the program? 

These are the original settings for the Heading PT 1 (from the previous issue). I never messed with them. How does the "Start in Next Column" get in there?

 

[Loquos]

10 minutes ago, Callum said:

Without a recipe to reproduce this setting being applied on its own it's hard to say if this is a bug or not unfortunately. 

 

EDIT: @Old Bruce to the rescue!

Well, if it ever does that weird paragraph thing it did that started this whole mess, I'll save out a version of that file for people to mess with. The whole experience was truly bizarre.