ToC adding page that doesn't have the matching style

[philipt18]

Okay, this is weird. I am fairly certain this hasn't happened before I started testing 2.3, but it doesn't come up that often, so it might have happened earlier.

I'm laying out a book in Publisher. The page headers are determined by the Section Name. So in my master pages for pages with text, I have a header field that grabs the text from the Section Name. Since some pages have the same section name (the section covers several pages), I have a duplicate style for the header that is what is grabbed by the ToC. For example, for the first page of each section, I switch to the Header ToC style, while all the other pages are just the regular header style.

Occasionally, I add a full page image, and in those cases I clear out the master, since I have no headers or footers on those pages. However, this is where it gets weird. When I clear out the master for that page, the page still shows up in the ToC, even though there is no text on the whole page with the Header ToC style. In fact, the fields that would normally have that style are not even on the page, since they come from the master page. I only noticed it because the ToC entry showed up twice - first where it is supposed to be, and then pointing to the page where the full-page image is. Definitely a bug, as this should be impossible.

[philipt18]

Adding a bit of info. On a different page, which is before the beginning of a new Chapter, I cleared the master and there was no problem. I then put back the master, and styled the header with the Header ToC style, and then cleared the master. Now the page shows up twice in the ToC (even though again it doesn't have any text with the Header ToC style), and the next page (the beginning of the chapter) shows up twice pointing to the same page. 

[MikeTO]

It's really hard to understand this issue without seeing the document but I suggest looking at the Layers panel for the pages with the full-page images. Are you sure there are no layers there that have the text that is being picked up by the TOC?

Good luck.

[philipt18]

Okay, this shows what is going on, but it still doesn't make any sense to me. I have a Master page which is for book text. There's a left and right page to the Master. You can see in the drop-down on the left that there is no master applied to the right page. Then you can see in the Layers panel that among the Left side layers, the right-side Section Name exists (and is highlighted at the top of the right page). It can't be correct that when only the left-page of the Master page is used, that the right-page fields also exist.

[philipt18]

Presumably I could create a new Master called Text-Blank where the left side is the same, and the right side is blank, and using that would fix this problem. However, I spent some time reducing the number of Master pages I was using because it was causing hard to determine problems. I'd hate to have to add two master pages (I need one for when the image is on the left as well) just to fix this. I guess it would be helpful if someone could confirm that this is not the correct behavior. If it is for reasons I don't understand correct, then I guess I can just add the master pages and move on...

[philipt18]

Okay, I tried the above and it, in fact, didn't work.

First, I just created a blank master page, and applied that to the right-side page. That didn't work because the left-side page still had the right-side fields listed.

Then I created two master pages, Text-Blank and Blank-Text (Text-Blank is my text fields on the left page, and a blank right page. Blank-Text is the reverse.). I applied Text-Blank to the right-page,  but the same problem. I then applied Text-Blank to both sides of the spread, but that also didn't do anything.

Finally, I re-created a Blank-Blank master page, and if I used the Left-Blank on the left page and the Blank-Blank on the right page, it worked properly.

This seems like a bit too much of duct tape and rubber bands for my taste. Is this somehow the right way to do this, or is Publisher doing something wrong?

[MikeTO]

Unfortunately, this is the way it works in Publisher. If you apply a facing-pages master to the one side of the spread it will still have all the objects for both sides - the ones on the other side will simply be hidden. This isn't a bug, it's by design.

You can see this with a new document with a single right-side page. There will be objects on the left "side" even though there's no page there.

[philipt18]

I don't understand the logic of including fields from the side not used.

[MikeTO]

6 hours ago, philipt18 said:

I don't understand the logic of including fields from the side not used.

I understand why it was done this way, it keeps things simple in terms of building the application. And normally it doesn't bother anybody because these extra objects are hidden.

This design approach won't scale for multi-page spreads which is a frequently requested feature because they have left, centre, and right pages, so perhaps someday when that feature is added things will be changed.

Cheers

[Old Bruce]

22 hours ago, philipt18 said:

I don't understand the logic of including fields from the side not used.

 

16 hours ago, MikeTO said:

I understand why it was done this way, it keeps things simple in terms of building the application. And normally it doesn't bother anybody because these extra objects are hidden.

 

When I come across this sort of problem I go and delete the "invisible" objects from the Actual Page by using the Edit Detached function. Sometimes that is a fair amount of work though.