Am I missing something or why is the anchor hierarchy constantly wiped?

[Motljus]

I have the following hierarchy setup with Next Level for Header 1, Header 2 and Header 3.

I need this hierarchy to present the anchors in the PDF bookmarks without being a complete mess to the reader.

For some reason Affinity Publisher doesn't recognize my hierarchy automatically, so I wonder if there's some setting or default naming scheme I'm missing.

But I managed to stack the desired hierarchy manually, but every time I update the TOC my manual hierarchy gets wiped so they all revert to the same base level. I even tried deleting the whole TOC since I read that some users managed to solve their problems by doing that, but still the same result of resetting all to the same level.

It also doesn't help that the manual management takes forever since there's up to hundreds of anchors. And since you can't drag-drop an anchor towards the top or bottom of the list, so that it autoscrolls upwards/downards, it takes even longer time. Another annoyance is that even though I minimize all of them, everything is maximized again every time I drag and drop something, making it even harder to move anchors off screen.

Please tell me that there's some setting I am missing, that would solve this mess automatically for me, because this can not be the intended feature? Or is there a bug report I haven't found that they are working on?

[Motljus]

Doh!

After trying to debug this problem for several days, I just happened to find an article about selecting the "Show hierarchical" option under Text Styles as well as setting them to "Based on" and not just Next level.

That fixed some random styles, but not most of them on TOC update. They look fine in the Hierarchical view, but they aren't grouped like that on export still.

 

[MikeTO]

Show Hierarchical just affects the panel display and has nothing to do with the bookmark hierarchy

Next Level just changes the style for a numbered or bulleted paragraph to the next level (Tab) or previous level (Shift + Tab). It has nothing to do with the bookmark hierarchy.

The Anchors panel doesn't show the bookmark hierarchy but the anchor hierarchy. It's confusing because the Anchors panel is alphabetical and bears no relation to what you'll see in the PDF.

While you can change the hierarchy of anchors, you cannot do this for anchors generated from a TOC because updating the TOC will revert them to the heading hierarchy. If you want anchors to be in a different hierarchy than your headings then you will have to disable PDF bookmarks for TOC headings and insert manual anchors.

So what is the issue you're having? Do the bookmarks in the exported PDF not align to your TOC hierarchy?

The issues with the panel that you mentioned have been previously reported. Here are some of them:

 

[Motljus]

The problem is that I lose all hierarchy upon PDF export to bookmarks. Every bookmark is sorted flat in the same level. (see first screenshot below).

If I however manually re arrange the anchors in a hierarchy as seen in my first post, they will actually keep that hierarchy even in the exported bookmarks (although they are sorted correctly and not in alphabetical order).

See second screenshot below;

The problem is that I lose all my effort of manually creating a hierarchy every time I update the TOC, since TOC will re arrange the anchor hierarchy.

So I wonder what I'm either missing in the text style setup, that makes the TOC flatline the entire hierarchy, or if there's a way to make the TOC stop resetting the hierarchy?

(I need Header 1 to be top level, Header 2 under Header 1, Header 3 under Header 2)

 

[MikeTO]

You shouldn't need to manually create a hierarchy, your TOC hierarchy should generate the PDF bookmark hierarchy for you.

Click the menu icon to the right of the selected heading styles in the TOC panel. Heading 1 should be set to level 1, heading 2 to level 2, etc. If they are set to the same level or 0 then fixing this will fix your issue.

Are you using the Books feature (multiple chapter documents combined into a Book)? If so, there is a known bug in 2.5.5 with PDF bookmark hierarchy for a Book:

This problem has been fixed for the upcoming 2.6 version but there are two newly-reported bookmark + Book issues you should be aware of, too.

[Motljus]

Thanks for answering, but I'm not sure I fully understand what you say.

"Click the menu icon to the right of the selected heading styles in the TOC panel." and then what? Do you mean the "Edit X" option, or is there a way to see the current level directly under that menu?

Also, to be sure I fully understand you; exactly where should I specify the current level of a Text style?

I am indeed creating a book with multiple chapters. Some of the chapters seems to get hierarchies partially correctly automatically, but most of them won't.

Is there a workaround I could use meanwhile, since my current manual handling is really frustrating.

[MikeTO]

I suspect you're looking at the Text Styles panel and not the TOC panel. Check out this screenshot - click the menu icon (the 3-line hamburger) to the right of the style name in the TOC panel.

But if you're using the Books feature, this is unlikely to be the issue, it's more likely to be the known bug with PDF hierarchies being flattened and messed up in 2.5.5. You could download the 2.6 beta and try it in that but be warned that if you save your book from 2.6, overwriting the files, you will not be able to open it in 2.5.5.

[Hangman]

Hi @Motljus,

Just adding to the feedback... as @MikeTO highlighted and linked to in an earlier post, when working with Books the issue you're experiencing is a known bug logged under AF-4078. The bug still exists in the 2.6 Beta, so there's little point in trying it at this stage as you'll get the same outcome.

However, in 2.5.5 and 2.6 Beta, simply invoking the PDF Export window will flatten the Anchor hierarchy when working with Books as will closing and then re-opening the .afbook file. On Mac, selecting the TOC without refreshing it in the 2.6 Beta also appears to flatten the Anchor hierarchy.

The only workaround for a standard document is to set your Anchor hierarchy as the final step before exporting when you know you don't need to update the TOC, which is far from ideal.

The screenshot in your first post appears to be a standard document, i.e., not part of a Book which means the Anchor Hierarchy is maintained on export, assuming the TOC isn't updated before exporting the file.

Unfortunately, the situation is worse with Book Chapters. There is another bug, logged under AF-5131 which means that Bookmarks don't export at all if your Book includes a TOC and only the bookmarks for the first Chapter export if the TOC is excluded from the export.

[Petar Petrenko]

Something off topic:

After INDEX, INTRODUCTION... tabs and page numbers should be (in your case) Italic not Bold or Bold Italic.