TOC adds line breaks

[squinx]

Hello!

I have tried everything to see why these line breaks keep happening. I can understand between chapters and titles, and can fix that easily since there are not too many chapters. I have checked my master pages, my Chapter pages, and my paragraph style for tab stops. I have "remove line breaks checked". I have tested with no paragraph or character styles. I have resized the text box. I have closed and reopened the book, and the program. What am I missing please and thank you?

[Old Bruce]

@squinx,

First off the Line Break is not the same as a Paragraph break. Line Breaks are made by holding shift and hitting the Return key, a Paragraph break is made with just the Return key.

Having said that I would suggest you put you cursor in the ToC in a line that has the page number and take a look at the Tabs settings for that ToC Paragraph Style. You may need to adjust the Tab Stop settings. 

If possible could you make a new Document with Chapter one's headings and a bit, just a few lines, of the regular text copied from this problem document and paste it into the new document. Make a ToC the same way and if the problem exists then post that tiny file here.

[Alfred]

41 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

First off the Line Break is not the same as a Paragraph break.

The OP’s screenshot shows clearly that there is a Paragraph Break (indicated by a pilcrow ¶) after the last text character in each line of the TOC.

[MikeTO]

It's just an issue with the tabs, most likely the tab stop is left aligned instead of right aligned.

If you edit the TOC 1: Bodoni Heading Large style, you'll likely find that the tab stop is set to 0 from right but left aligned.

1. Edit TOC 1: Bodoni Heading Large
2. Click Tab Stops in the left navigation
3. Click the More (ellipsis) icon to the right of the tab stop and change it to match this - (the 0p is because I'm using picas, just set it to 0 regardless of your measurement units)
   
4. You can also set the Leader character to (.) if you want a dot leader.

There should be only one tab stop set to 0 from right and right aligned.

Good luck

[squinx]

@MikeTOHere's the setting I had - I try to do my homework in the forum! Lots of good info to help others here. 

 

@Alfred I see that in the TOC, but it is not on the master page or in the text....I am trying to figure out where that's coming from

 

 

 

[Alfred]

16 minutes ago, squinx said:

@Alfred I see that in the TOC, but it is not on the master page or in the text....I am trying to figure out where that's coming from

Special characters such as line breaks and page breaks are not always visible. You can toggle their visibility via the ‘Show Special Characters’ option on the Text menu in Publisher.

[MikeTO]

@Alfred I missed the paragraph break in the screenshot. So my suspicion that it was the tab was incorrect. I'm unsure where the paragraph break would be coming from.

@squinx I think we'll need to see screenshots of the Bodoni Heading Large style definition (the original style, not the TOC one), and a screenshot of one of the headings formatted with that style with show special characters on. Also turn on highlight fields for good measure although that's grasping at straws.

[walt.farrell]

@squinx: If you can create this situation in a sample .afpub file that you can share with us, that would be the best way to diagnose this, I think.

[squinx]

Thanks y'all for your help - I have screenshots and a file to supply. I do know how to look for special characters, but I still don't know where they are coming from. I can deal with the ones btw "Chapter #" and Title manually, but he rest....?

 

TOC Test.afbook

[MikeTO]

It appears that you've attached your .afbook file but that doesn't have any of the information we need to see. We'd need to see one of the chapter files.

The document screenshot looks fine. One tip - you've created a separate text frame for the heading (e.g., Introduction). You could achieve the same design by entering the chapter headings into the main text frame which would avoid the need for a separate master page for the first page of each chapter. Just edit the chapter heading text style to have a lot of space before and after it and it will look identical but be a simpler document. This won't solve the TOC issue though.

Can you show us a screenshot of the style definition for the Introduction style, which I assume is named Bodoni Heading Large. You've shown us the TOC style definition but we need to see the non-TOC one.

[squinx]

@MikeTO Thanks for the input - I see what you mean, but this is the way I did it - it's my first book. (And yes I know the Bodini font is not relevant here, it's just the title that stuck). 

Oops I sent the wrong screenshot - and does this file work?

intro sample.afpub

 

 

[MikeTO]

I've figured it out now. You've made work for yourself by not using standard heading names such as Heading 1, 2... If you use the standard ones, everything works automatically.

The footer is formatted with the same text style (Bodoni Heading Large) as the titles. The test document didn't include the TOC, but you've created a TOC without page numbers and the page numbers you're seeing are actually the text of your footers.

So edit your master page and change those footers to a different text style. Then edit your TOC and click the more (menu) icon to the right of Bodoni Heading Large in the TOC panel. That will open a popup window and in that select "Include Page Number" and change Indent Level from 0 to 1. The latter isn't necessary but will be useful if you use PDF.

Good luck!

[squinx]

@MikeTO That is some SERIOUS SLEUTHING! 😲 That's what was up! Thank you so much!