Publisher - Indents, spacing & tab stops of TOC

[anna.j]

Hi, I have a problem with TOC in Affinity Publisher
The long headings are too long to stay in one line in TOC, but when I increase the right indent so that they are in two lines, the page numbers go to the third line and I don't know how to take them back to the end of the second line. Also dots are ending in different places, one line has less, the other more

How to manage it?
I'm sure it's a simple thing, I just don't know which setting should be combined in this case

attaching screenshots
 

[MikeTO]

1 hour ago, anna.j said:

The long headings are too long to stay in one line in TOC, but when I increase the right indent so that they are in two lines, the page numbers go to the third line and I don't know how to take them back to the end of the second line. Also dots are ending in different places, one line has less, the other more

Hi Anna and welcome to the forums.

I don't think there is a way to solve this. Publisher breaks after a tab character. MS Word doesn't have this problem because it breaks before the tab character. I've been thinking about suggesting that enhancement so I'll go do that now.

I have this issue with one heading in the TOC for my Publisher manual and in my pre-PDF checklist I have a step to correct it manually by inserting a line break where I want the text to wrap. I suggest you do this for now, too. The other option is to apply No Break to the tab character but that's no easier.

Good luck.

[MikeTO]

FYI

 

[bbrother]

2 hours ago, anna.j said:

The long headings are too long to stay in one line in TOC, but when I increase the right indent so that they are in two lines, the page numbers go to the third line and I don't know how to take them back to the end of the second line.

Hi Anna. When you are increase right indent the last line outdent is changed acordingly an thats probably causing the page numbers are pushed to third line. Manualy reset to 0mm the last line outdent setting after you make changes in right indent and the page number should move back to the second line.

Change your indent settings to those listed bellow and check if it helps with moving back page numbers to second line.

 

 

[anna.j]

Thank you Mike & bbrother! That was helpful! I was really close 🎉
One more question, forgot to ask

In the screenshot above you can also see that some one line headings are followed by dots while in other cases the dots begin in the next line. 
Any idea what's causing that? I wouldn't like to fix it manually 🥴

[MikeTO]

6 minutes ago, anna.j said:

In the screenshot above you can also see that some one line headings are followed by dots while in other cases the dots begin in the next line. 
Any idea what's causing that? I wouldn't like to fix it manually 🥴

That happens when the tab is wider than the column. For example, if the column or frame is 4 in wide and you set the dot leader tab (right aligned, dot leader, not from right) to 4.01 in.

The best way to create dot leaders is to set them to 0 from right, not a number from left matching the columns or frame width. Click the More (...) icon to get to the "from right" option.

[anna.j]

hmm I have them aligned from right to 0 mm, exactly as you're showing, but still it's showing as in the screenshots

[MikeTO]

37 minutes ago, anna.j said:

hmm I have them aligned from right to 0 mm, exactly as you're showing, but still it's showing as in the screenshots

I'd have to see a sample to figure it out then.

[bbrother]

2 hours ago, anna.j said:

In the screenshot above you can also see that some one line headings are followed by dots while in other cases the dots begin in the next line. 

Like MikeTo said without sample document it is dificult for us to say anything more.
The only thing that still comes into my my mind is that maybe in your broken one line headings there is a line break just after the text part.
You could check if there is a line break in those broken headings by turning on text > show special characters option.

If there is a line break in those headings you would see an blue special character like that one bellow and you need to remove them.

Also based on the name of your text style, which is Spis treści: Heading 2, I assume that you typed the table of contents manually and used text styles to format it.
Affinity Publisher has a dedicated function for creating TOC and it would be worth trying it. Link to help files and tutorial video below.

TOC help files:
https://affinity.help/publisher/en-US.lproj/pages/Advanced/toc.html

official affinity TOC tutorial video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_qoT3IJg4c

[anna.j]

Yes, I found the option "Remove line breaks" accidentally 😄 
All works now, thanks!
I don't create TOC manually 😜

[bbrother]

22 hours ago, anna.j said:

Yes, I found the option "Remove line breaks" accidentally 😄 

I was going to suggest that you use the "Remove line breaks" option in the TOC panel, but you figured it out yourself.
Practice makes the master.
I'm glad we could help solve your problem.