Alphabetical Table of contents

[Ove Steen]

Creating a songbook in Affinity Publisher 2 I want to have an alphabetical TOC or Index of songtitels including alternative songtitels. These titels are alle created and defined as paragraph styles on every page.

Should I do  this as a TOC or as an index? 

In the TOC panel I cannot find a way to choose alphabetical sorting. In the index panel I cannot see how to choose the paragraph styles.

[walt.farrell]

A TOC is in page order, not alphabetical order.

Indexes are in alphabetical order, but you can only have one in a document. And they are not based on text styles. Instead, they use Index Marks that you insert into the document.

[Old Bruce]

I would generate an index by putting an index mark in each Song Name. Then I would copy and paste, as text, that index into the front of the book.

[Ove Steen]

In "Help" I found this:

About text styles in indexing

When you insert an index, index-specific paragraph styles (Index Section Heading, Index Entry 1, Index Entry 2) will be assigned automatically, along with character styles for page references and cross reference labels; these styles are controlled via the Text Styles panel.

But I simply need a more specified explanation to understand this.

[walt.farrell]

5 minutes ago, Ove Steen said:

In "Help" I found this:

About text styles in indexing

When you insert an index, index-specific paragraph styles (Index Section Heading, Index Entry 1, Index Entry 2) will be assigned automatically, along with character styles for page references and cross reference labels; these styles are controlled via the Text Styles panel.

But I simply need a more specified explanation to understand this.

That is saying that text styles are assigned to index entries automatically as the index is generated. Indexes are not like TOCs, where the TOC is constructed from entries to which you have assigned specific text styles.

[Ove Steen]

Thank you, Bruce

But we are talking about hundreds of songtitles. 

If I don't get a better advice I will copy the TOC to sort it alphabetically. Word can do that (of course). Affinity can not.

[Ove Steen]

Walt, you sat:

" text styles are assigned to index entries automatically as the index is generated."

Is that something I can use to make an alphabetical index based on a text style named "songtitles"? I simply don't understand the procedure. Can you decribe it step by step?

Before buying Affinity Publisher 2 I asked the team, if I would be able to create alphabetical index. And someone named Nathan answered, that I could.  So please...

[walt.farrell]

11 minutes ago, Ove Steen said:

" text styles are assigned to index entries automatically as the index is generated."

Is that something I can use to make an alphabetical index based on a text style named "songtitles"? I simply don't understand the procedure. Can you decribe it step by step?

No. The Index entries will be in alphabetical order automatically, based on their index entry names. You simply would select the song title in the document and insert an index mark for it. Then it will show up in the index.

Here is an example where I selected each song title (which are not in alphabetical order in the document), and for each fully-selected song title I added an index mark. I then created an index, and you will see that the songs are now in alphabetical order automatically.

[Ove Steen]

So, you tell me, that I should go to every single songtitle (hundreds), select the title and insert index mark?

It is not possible to apply index to the paragraph style?

I have tried to create an index. I am surprised to see that it does not come up with tab between the text and the related page number.

Is there a way to choose that?

[walt.farrell]

26 minutes ago, Ove Steen said:

So, you tell me, that I should go to every single songtitle (hundreds), select the title and insert index mark?

Yes.

26 minutes ago, Ove Steen said:

It is not possible to apply index to the paragraph style?

Correct, That is how you build a TOC, but it is not how you build an Index.

27 minutes ago, Ove Steen said:

I have tried to create an index. I am surprised to see that it does not come up with tab between the text and the related page number.

Is there a way to choose that?

Look in the Index studio panel, where you should find a Separator field.

[MikeTO]

Hi, you asked Serif if you could create an alphabetical index and you said Nathan replied yes, which is correct. As Walt has pointed out, you can create an alphabetical index but you have to manually insert your index marks.

To create a list based on paragraph style you need to use a TOC. Fortunately, you can create as many TOCs as you want. Just create a TOC for this, copy the text into any program which can sort alphabetically, sort it, and paste it back where you want it in Affinity. This isn't hard to do.

[walt.farrell]

18 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

Just create a TOC for this, copy the text into any program which can sort alphabetically, sort it, and paste it back where you want it in Affinity. This isn't hard to do.

But to be clear, that means you can't let Publisher generate the TOC. It must be one that is manually created, or at least manually updated. And if anything changes, the manual updating will need to be re-applied, because if you just tell Publisher to update it, it will go back into page order, not alphabetical order.

Also, copying the text from Publisher into the other application will be at least as hard as selecting the text and inserting Index marks, so using an Index will probably be easier in the end than doing it with a TOC.

[Ove Steen]

Mike, you said:

"Just create a TOC for this, copy the text into any program which can sort alphabetically, sort it, and paste it back where you want it in Affinity. This isn't hard to do." 

Yes, that is most easy. Unfortunately I loose the hyperlinks, if the text has been around another program (Word). The alphabetical version will not be clickable. 

Walt,

I hope you agree, that the most simple solution would be, if Affinity could make it possible to choose alphabetical order when creating a TOC. We are looking forward to the next update. I suppose I am not the only user hoping for that.

[walt.farrell]

17 minutes ago, Ove Steen said:

I hope you agree, that the most simple solution would be, if Affinity could make it possible to choose alphabetical order when creating a TOC. We are looking forward to the next update. I suppose I am not the only user hoping for that.

I doubt that is something we will see in the next update, but I guess we'll find out soon when the 2.1 beta program begins.

In the meantime, I would estimate that using the Index approach I mentioned would take a few seconds per title, once you get used to doing it. And it works now.

• Click in the title. Triple-click to select all of a single-line title, or quadruple-click for a multi-line title that is the entire content of the paragraph.
• Ctrl+Alt+Shift+[ to insert the mark (you can change that shortcut to something shorter, if you want), followed by clicking OK.
• Repeat for next title.

[Ove Steen]

Thank you, Walt!

[walt.farrell]

You're welcome.

[Hoanglien]

The export-alphabetize-import workarounds have a couple of problems.

1. Links get lost.

2. A lot of steps, which I am sure to mess up on revisions.

Pretty please Affinity. Can't we have this? This doesn't seem all that hard. Indesign has had this a very long time. And many sorts of books need multiple TOCs.

[Ove Steen]

I agree. Alphabetical index is an example of Affinity making some solutions unnecessarily complicated. Do as InDesign when you e.g. want to make a songbook:

Paragraph style intended for song titles are put in alphabetical index. 

Fine that you can more complicated references. But please leave the easy and simple working solutions for the rest of us.

[Oufti]

On 2/12/2023 at 1:43 PM, Ove Steen said:

So, you tell me, that I should go to every single songtitle (hundreds), select the title and insert index mark?

It is not possible to apply index to the paragraph style?

Trying to use Find & Replace, I found that it is possible to add an index mark to each paragraph of a certain style (combining format search + regular expression + copy an existing index mark)

— so it is possible to have an index with one reference, one "topic", containing all the page numbers where that style, e.g. Intitulé, is applied — but I have not been able to "select" the text with that style, for it to be copied in the index as a new topic. 

Thus this seems a no-way avenue but perhaps this will give some ideas to someone more experienced than I'm… 

(The regular expression is a very simple one, used as a proof of concept. I don't master that at all…)

 

 

[Charles Davis]

Absence of the alphabetical TOC (for song books) is the ONLY reason I still use InDesign. And I would LOVE to get rid of InDesign once and for all. Hint hint, Affinity...

[Ove Steen]

Well, I think I found it here:

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/191879-unofficial-pdf-manual-expert-guide-to-affinity-publisher/

But as always Affinity makes everything more complicated than necessary. I and have to study the manual everytime I want to make an index once more.

In InDesign TOC and index were two related topics. But not in Affinity.

Good luck

[MSchmid]

I have the exact same problem at the moment, making a songbook, want a alphabetical TOC because of different song titles. I am glad it was already answered (and a pity it's still not possible to make a alphabetical TOC).

[Ben M]

On 10/23/2023 at 10:55 AM, Oufti said:

Trying to use Find & Replace, I found that it is possible to add an index mark to each paragraph of a certain style (combining format search + regular expression + copy an existing index mark)

I too wanted something like this, an index of subheadings (or to put it another way, a table of contents ordered alphabetically).

I couldn't even get the Find & Replace dialogue to paste an index mark, though.

The closest to a workaround I could find for automating this was to use Find with the format search to select each thing I wanted to index and use the 'insert index mark' shortcut to add index topic and reference at the same time.

Alternatively, temporarily create a text frame with the names of all the things to be indexed (if it's section names, then inserting a table of contents will work for this), then select each line in turn and hit 'insert index mark' to create a topic of that name, and finally in the index panel, go through each topic in turn and use 'find in document' to put the actual intended index in.

Never mind that, the original way is fairly fast. Assign a quick shortcut to 'insert index mark' and another one to 'find next' that's easy to reach from the first shortcut, and it's a matter of hitting shortcut1, shortcut2, enter, repeat. Don't get a RSI.

Edited July 6, 2024 by Ben M