TOC tutorial please

[kat]

Is there an easy to understand Table of Contents tutorial for Apub 2.4? I looked TOC up in help, very limited: nothing on how to set period after tabs, style the TOC, etc. I can make a TOC and populate with heading 2, but when I click anything in the TOC panel then unclick, then click update TOC,  no way to undo. Help please

 

[MikeTO]

Hi Kat, I provided steps on how to generate and format TOCs in the free manual I've shared in this forum, including how to set periods (a dot leader) between the entries and page numbers. The link is in my signature below.

Cheers

[Brian_J]

To complement Mike’s manual, YouTube is a good resource. I haven’t watched the following videos, but I watched content on both channels when I started using the Affinity apps and both have good content.

YouTube search: Affinity publisher table of contents

 

 

[kat]

@Brian_JI watched the top How to Create TOC video. But it's over 2 hours long. A lot of it is her trying to figure out how to make things work, so very confusing. The Affinity Revolution TOC is much better, 15 min long; it's 4 years old.

@MikeTOPDF is now my GO-TO. It has everything. I'll use it instead of Affinity help from now on.

Qs: Can I change name of the TOC group & style adding prefix AA-?

What do anchors look like. I remember them from InDesign.

[MikeTO]

10 minutes ago, kat said:

Qs: Can I change name of the TOC group & style adding prefix AA-?

What do anchors look like. I remember them from InDesign.

Yes, you can rename a TOC style from TOC 1 to whatever you like. Click the more icon to the right of the TOC Style list in the panel and choose Rename from the menu. Most people only have a single TOC so they don't care that their TOC text styles are named TOC 1: Heading 1 (or whatever). I have two levels of TOCs in the manual I wrote, and just use TOC 1 for the main TOC at the start of the manual and TOC 2 for all of the chapter-level TOCs. I could rename them but don't need to.

Anchors - there's a chapter on anchors. They're similar to ID but a bit different. You can insert an anchor in text or to an object. Note that the TOC generates automatic anchors at the start of each heading. If you keep editing your headings used in the TOC you may have multiple anchors due to a bug that is scheduled for fixing in 2.5.

Cheers

[walt.farrell]

21 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

Yes, you can rename a TOC style from TOC 1 to whatever you like. Click the more icon to the right of the TOC Style list in the panel and choose Rename from the menu.

Does that really work?

I would expect that you would need to change the TOC Style name in the TOC panel, and then let Publisher generatet its text style names based on that. That is, type in a new name here:

If you were to type, say MyToc there then the text style names used for that TOC would by MyToc: Header 1, for example.

[MikeTO]

@walt.farrell I believe we're saying the same thing. I was referring to renaming the TOC Style by clicking the More icon to the right of it in the TOC panel, not to renaming a TOC text style in the Text Styles panel.

[kat]

Can I use GREP in a TOC, also in Find/Change? Also how do I put "Page" before a # in TOC contents?

[MikeTO]

GREP can be used only with find and replace, Publisher doesn't offer GREP styles.

I don't think you can preface page numbers with "Page" in the TOC. You'd probably only want to do that for a very short TOC or else it would look cluttered and in that case it would be easiest to just do it manually rather than try an awkward workaround. There's always a way to make it do something, and I could envision a solution with two TOCs, one with the page number to the left of the TOC entry and prefaced with a paragraph bullet set to Page somehow, but I didn't give it a try since this seems awkward.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, MikeTO said:

@walt.farrell I believe we're saying the same thing. I was referring to renaming the TOC Style by clicking the More icon to the right of it in the TOC panel, not to renaming a TOC text style in the Text Styles panel.

Ah. Sorry, I misunderstood.

[bbrother]

3 hours ago, MikeTO said:

I don't think you can preface page numbers with "Page" in the TOC. You'd probably only want to do that for a very short TOC or else it would look cluttered and in that case it would be easiest to just do it manually rather than try an awkward workaround.

It's doable. Just configure the "Separator" field and the table of contents text style appropriately, adding extra tabs.
The only question remains: why do it at all?

[kat]

How do I reorder TOC items. I want Spotlight to come before Text Frame 1 & 2 in TOC. But though Spotlight is on the top of page 2 it appears as the  4th TOC item for page 2?

[Brian_J]

Drag the Spotlight layer below Text Frame 1 and 2 layers.

TOCs are created based on the order of layers in the Layers Panel; bottom (first) to top (last).

[Alfred]

3 minutes ago, Brian_J said:

Drag the Spotlight layer below Text Frame 1 and 2 layers.

TOCs are created based on the order of layers in the Layers Panel; bottom (first) to top (last).

If you want more flexibility you could use an index instead of a TOC, but you can only have one index per document.

[MikeTO]

52 minutes ago, kat said:

How do I reorder TOC items. I want Spotlight to come before Text Frame 1 & 2 in TOC. But though Spotlight is on the top of page 2 it appears as the  4th TOC item for page 2?

Changing the layer order is the solution but you can avoid this by not putting your chapter titles in separate text frames. If the only difference in the first page of a chapter is the title, there's no need for a separate master. Just use the normal full size text frame and format the chapter title using space above and below to position it within the frame. Then you'll never need to worry about the layer order.

[kat]

I remember it being bottom layer starts first in InDesign. It took me ages to figure that out.

I'm beginning to think that master pages are only good for page #s and reoccurring items as with book. But bad for newsletters where everything moves a lot. Thoughts?

[MikeTO]

Master pages are essential to ensure consistency and to make it easy to change things later. Without master pages, changing the page size at a later date would be a lot of work.

[kat]

On 3/24/2024 at 4:34 PM, MikeTO said:

Master pages are essential to ensure consistency and to make it easy to change things later. Without master pages, changing the page size at a later date would be a lot of work.

I'd always used MS with InDesign for large books and reports and directories. And assumed it would work for this 6 to 8 page newsletter in Apub — didn't. But I'm getting the hang of it thanks to the forum's help.

New Qs:

1. How do I control text spacing within a rectangle frame?

2. How to make Hyperlink URLS that break on 2 lines work? I remember this from InDesign but can remember the trick to fix.

I love that I can edit an Apub in AD & AP - awesome.

[MikeTO]

4 hours ago, kat said:

1. How do I control text spacing within a rectangle frame?

2. How to make Hyperlink URLS that break on 2 lines work? I remember this from InDesign but can remember the trick to fix.

#1 - Do you mean control word and letter spacing? You can do that with Paragraph > Justification Options. It has a misleading name because some of the options apply to more than justified text, but it works identically to InDesign. I offered some recommended ranges in my manual. But if you meant Kerning and Tracking, those are in Character > Positioning and Transform.

#2 - There's no trick, it just works. Select the text and hyperlink it.

[kat]

2 hours ago, MikeTO said:

#1 - Do you mean control word and letter spacing? You can do that with Paragraph > Justification Options. It has a misleading name because some of the options apply to more than justified text, but it works identically to InDesign. I offered some recommended ranges in my manual. But if you meant Kerning and Tracking, those are in Character > Positioning and Transform.

#2 - There's no trick, it just works. Select the text and hyperlink it.

#1 Justification works fine. All centered. The problem is space before the top paragraph and space after the bottom paragraph. Changing space before & space after does nothing.

#2 - I made a hyperlink, exported to a small pdf included hyperlinks. All that happens is clicking takes me to the first page of the pdf. 

[Oufti]

6 hours ago, kat said:

1. How do I control text spacing within a rectangle frame?

Perhaps do you wonder how to leave space around the text inside the frame?

If this is it, menu Window > Text > Text frame, where you can set space left around the text. 

 

[Alfred]

9 minutes ago, kat said:

#2 - I made a hyperlink, exported to a small pdf included hyperlinks. All that happens is clicking takes me to the first page of the pdf.

Which page are you trying to link to instead, Kat? What is the format of the hyperlink?

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, kat said:

#1 Justification works fine. All centered. The problem is space before the top paragraph and space after the bottom paragraph. Changing space before & space after does nothing.

Sounds like you might have set the Vertical Alignment to Center. That would leave equal amounts of blayck space above and below the text.

1 hour ago, kat said:

#2 - I made a hyperlink, exported to a small pdf included hyperlinks. All that happens is clicking takes me to the first page of the pdf

We would need more details on the kind of hyperlink you created and exactly what you did. Screenshots and/or a sample .afpub would also be nice.

[kat]

12 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Which page are you trying to link to instead, Kat? What is the format of the hyperlink?

Didn't realize there are different formats ; ) All is well. Thanks @Alfred

[kat]

@walt.farrellShould like you might have set the Vertical Alignment to Center. That would leave equal amounts of blayck space above and below the text.

All that did was align the entire text frame. Guess you can't use align to align text within a frame.