Publisher 2 TOC will not populate

[QuinnSilver]

EDIT: I am on Windows 10

I have a pretty large afpub document I've been working in since before 2 came out. It had a working table of contents before this. I am familiar with the basics of how to make and use a table of contents and I have poured over youtube videos and the help manual looking for a solution for this issue. 

Issue: When I tried to update the (working) TOC, it returned to me the "no entries found" message. Ever since then, I have not been able to get a new ToC to populate. Here's what I have tried: 

- Restarted AfPub 2 (multiple times at this point)

- deleted the text frame the toc was in, and started a new one from scratch

- painstakingly changed every option in the ToC panel one at a time to see if any of them are the problem 

- searched the internet for every variation of "affinity publisher toc won't populate" that I could possibly think of, but none of it turned up anyone who is having this issue.

Also this is weird, so I'm mentioning it in case it's possibly part of my problem somehow: Over in my text styles panels, new ToC styles keep appearing. I have no idea how these are cropping up, especially since I have not successfully gotten the ToC to work yet. In the screenshot of my text styles panel you can see several variations of TOC 1: Entry. When I first started trying to get my ToC to populate, the only things there were the [no style] options (nothing else at all.) Eventually TOC 1: Entry turned up and I was hoping that meant the TOC would work properly, but unfortunately that hasn't been the case. I have no idea how the two TOC styles labelled "accent text" were created. I don't think this is related to the problem but I thought it wouldn't hurt to mention it.

Any help would be appreciated, thank you in advance.

Edited February 22, 2024 by QuinnSilver
added OS

[bbrother]

Note: Without the source file, it will be difficult to figure out what is causing your table of contents generation problem.

From the screenshot you provided, it appears that only the "Helosail Accent Text" text style is picked up for TOC creation, which does not match the selected text styles in the TOC panel, but even so, if this style is not an unused style, the entries based on it should show up in a text frame, but they are'nt. This is very odd.

I know that the "Helosail Accent Text"  style is not the one you want to include in TOC but can you confirm that it is actually a used style (aplied to text somewher in document) and not an unused style?

This would shed some light on why no entry was created in the text frame at all, even based on the incorrect text style as source.

1 hour ago, QuinnSilver said:

I have a pretty large afpub document I've been working in since before 2 came out

If I understand correctly, you originally created this document in V1 and the TOC problem arose during further editing, but already in V2.

If yes does the TOC update still work's in V1?

Note: I hope you were working in version 2 on a document copy of version 1 as there is no backward compatibility between versions. Once a V1 document is opened and saved in version 2, then it can't be opened in version 1.

If everything with TOC works fine in V1 maybe there was some corruptions while opening in V2? Wchich version msi or msix of APub V2 you use?
If you youse msix i would try to uninstal msix version of APub and all other msix affinity apps if you own some and try msi versions?

[walt.farrell]

It is difficult to say, without seeing more about the document layout. But perhaps you need to enable the TOC panel option "Include entries before TOC".

[bbrother]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

But perhaps you need to enable the TOC panel option "Include entries before TOC"

I though the same but @QuinSilver clearly wrote that this TOC worked fine till V2 came out.
Im assuming that the options from TOC panel screenshot are the same as before.
Walt as we don't know the structure of the document so it's worth of trying like you wrote "Include entries before TOC".

 

[QuinnSilver]

7 hours ago, bbrother said:

From the screenshot you provided, it appears that only the "Helosail Accent Text" text style is picked up for TOC creation, which does not match the selected text styles in the TOC panel, but even so, if this style is not an unused style, the entries based on it should show up in a text frame, but they are'nt. This is very odd.

Yes, wit is used in the document and it appears in the toc style options for including entries. 
 

Are you saying that all the styles that I want entries to be based on also need to appear in my text styles panel when I have the TOC selected? All of my styles appear in the text styles panel everywhere else in the document, but if I have the TOC selected than it is only the ones in the screenshot I provided that appear. Actually when I first started trying to update the ToC, no styles appeared except the [no style] options. 
 

7 hours ago, bbrother said:

If I understand correctly, you originally created this document in V1 and the TOC problem arose during further editing, but already in V2.

If yes does the TOC update still work's in V1?

Note: I hope you were working in version 2 on a document copy of version 1 as there is no backward compatibility between versions. Once a V1 document is opened and saved in version 2, then it can't be opened in version 1.

If everything with TOC works fine in V1 maybe there was some corruptions while opening in V2? Wchich version msi or msix of APub V2 you use?
If you youse msix i would try to uninstal msix version of APub and all other msix affinity apps if you own some and try msi versions?

Yes, I am working in a V2 version of the document. 

I can open the old V1 file and see after I get home from work today, but that file is greatly outdated so it might not be as informative.

I have no idea which msi version is installed. It would be whatever it defaults to, since I didn’t know what that was before googling it just now. How do I check which version I have? 

Thank you for your detailed response! 
 

ps: I don’t have much before the TOC, and nothing that I want included in it, but I did try the “include entries before toc” option to see if it made a difference. It did not. I can upload the full file when I get home. 

[bbrother]

21 minutes ago, QuinnSilver said:

Are you saying that all the styles that I want entries to be based on also need to appear in my text styles panel when I have the TOC selected?

Basicaly Yes. You have selected 4 text styles on the basis of which the table of contents is to be built.
In that case there should be 4 automaticaly generated paragraph styles in the Text Styles panel that control the formatting of the TOC when it is selected.

In your case there is only one based on "Helosail Accent Text"  wchich you didn't chose to create TOC from.

Note: Don't count the TOC1: Entry because it's base style for all entries in TOC.

 

21 minutes ago, QuinnSilver said:

I can upload the full file when I get home

If it's not a problem that would be best to check whats going wrong here.

 

[QuinnSilver]

11 hours ago, bbrother said:

If it's not a problem that would be best to check whats going wrong here.

Here's the entire file. I'm hoping it's going to end up being something really easy and simple that I'm just overlooking.

HeliosailHandbookAFFINITY2VERSION.afpub

[MikeTO]

It's because you've applied the paragraph styles used in the TOC to the characters of the paragraphs and haven't applied them as paragraph styles. The styles you chose to include in the TOC have not be applied to any paragraphs so the TOC feature can't find them.

It's easier to see if you turn off Show Hierarchical in the Text Styles panel menu. Then click in a heading and you'll see both No Style (paragraph) and Heliosail Section Headings both selected. The latter was applied by Apply "Heliosail Section Headings" to Characters from the style's menu.

To fix this, apply the paragraph styles to the paragraphs. Just click in the paragraph and click the style again. (You should also select the whole paragraph and click No Style (character) for each one, too, but that's not important.)

But the TOC also needs some work. For each included style, click its menu icon. Select Include Page Number or there will be no page numbers in your TOC. And assign "Indent Level"s to them, 1 is the top level, 2 is the next, 3 is the next. This only impacts the exported PDF bookmarks, not the left indent.

You'll find more information in the free Publisher manual I've shared in this forum - the link is below in my signature.

Cheers

[bbrother]

@QuinnSilver, no wonder APub can't generate TOC entries for you.

I don't know how, but paragraph styles that should be the source for the table of contents are applied as character styles in the paragraph text, not as paragraph styles themselves. And this is the main reason why you cannot generate a table of contents.

APub looks in document for paragraph styles that you selected as a source for TOC, it cannot find any, because altought they exist, but for some unknown reason they are applied as character styles. He can't pull the text from paragraph style to create the entry and gives you back an info that "No entries where found".

Note: You need to properly apply paragraph styles to chapter Headings, subheadings, section headings and then clear the character styles. 

I would suggest that you would use for this Find and Replace panel where you can find-replace things based on format, character style, paragraph styles etc. It would be much quicker then manualy correct things like MikeTo suggested.

Below is a video how to use the Find Replace panel to clear up styles for the chapter headings.
You can use this method for subheadings, section headings etc but you need adjust the format properties acordingly to what you want to look for.😉

EDIT:

@QuickSilver you need to practice to become better organized.
Good planning (organization of styles, master pages, sections, etc.) before you start working on the layout is half the battle.
But when everything is well planned, working on long documents is much easier and it is easier to fix any problems or make any changes.

 

 

[MikeTO]

5 hours ago, bbrother said:

I don't know how, but paragraph styles that should be the source for the table of contents are applied as character styles in the paragraph text, not as paragraph styles themselves.

Applying paragraph styles to characters is a feature of Affinity. Using the Text Styles panel, click the menu icon beside any paragraph style or right-click the paragraph style and choose "Apply <style name> to Characters". While it can be a useful feature, it is a source of confusion.

[QuinnSilver]

I thought I changed the character styles to paragraph styles, though… for each character style that is a heading I went to “edit style” and changed it to a paragraph style. That made those styles appear in the list of styles for the toc to use. Usually if I change a style, all the text with that style automatically updates, so I assumed that would be the case for this change as well.

Thanks for the lead! When I get home I will see if I can fix it.

8 hours ago, bbrother said:

@QuinnSilver you need to practice to become better organized.
Good planning (organization of styles, master pages, sections, etc.) before you start working on the layout is half the battle.
But when everything is well planned, working on long documents is much easier and it is easier to fix any problems or make any changes. 

Yeah, my workflow is terrible, I know. Visually laying out a game just helps me with the dev process, it’s how my brain works best, so I work on layout and development simultaneously as a result. It makes that kind of pre-planning pretty difficult if not impossible though. I definitely recommend that other people do NOT do this, but I am metaphorically the dad who tells you not to smoke while sucking down a pack a day, lol. 

[MikeTO]

2 minutes ago, QuinnSilver said:

I thought I changed the character styles to paragraph styles, though… for each character style that is a heading I went to “edit style” and changed it to a paragraph style. That made those styles appear in the list of styles for the toc to use. Usually if I change a style, all the text with that style automatically updates, so I assumed that would be the case for this change as well.

Thanks for the lead! When I get home I will see if I can fix it.

Yeah, my workflow is terrible, I know. Visually laying out a game just helps me with the dev process, it’s how my brain works best, so I work on layout and development simultaneously as a result. It makes that kind of pre-planning pretty difficult if not impossible though. I definitely recommend that other people do NOT do this, but I am metaphorically the dad who tells you not to smoke while sucking down a pack a day, lol. 

If you edit a character style and change it to a paragraph style, Publisher will not apply the style to the paragraphs, it's still applied just to the characters. You must re-apply it as I explained above.

Good luck.

[bbrother]

20 hours ago, MikeTO said:

Applying paragraph styles to characters is a feature of Affinity. Using the Text Styles panel, click the menu icon beside any paragraph style or right-click the paragraph style and choose "Apply <style name> to Characters". While it can be a useful feature, it is a source of confusion.

I know one of the things this feature allows is limit the total number of character styles, but it generally does more harm than good.
The OP problem with TOC generation is an good example. There should be a big "NO NO" when it comes to apply paragraph styles to characters.