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Table of contents and hyperlinks


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I am a previous user of Serif PagePlus and there are a couple of things I could do with that program that I can't seem to do with Affinity Publisher.

The first is put a load of full stops between the item and its page number (which makes scanning across easier). Yes, I can put in any old number of dots manually, but it it the same number regardless of the length of the item text. There seems to be no facility to automatically fill in the available space with dots.

The second apparently missing feature is hyperlinks. In PagePlus, you can automatically generate hyperlinks from the ToC items to the headings they refer to. More than that, I like to put a hyperlink from the page number at the bottom of each page back to the page containing the ToC. All these hyperlinks in PagePlus are automatically transferred to an exported PDF file, which makes navigating around the document on a computer a breeze.

Are these features truly absent, or am I missing something? If they are absent from the beta, are there any plans to incorporate them?

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Hi Michael Gough

You set the tab leader as part of the paragraph style used in the Table of Contents. If you go the the paragraph style you are using and edit it you set the leader in the tab stops section.

Hyperlinks are not something that will be part of the initial release I'm afraid but should be something we add in an update

Cheers

Serif Europe Ltd - Check the latest news at www.affinity.serif.com

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You're missing the point. Unless I'm missing something, you can't fill in the missing space between the ToC item and the page number with the correct number of dots unless all items in the list are the same length or the page numbers are not right justified. You can't even put in a different number of dots on each line manually. Every leader in the ToC must be the same.

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13 hours ago, Michael Gough said:

You're missing the point. Unless I'm missing something, you can't fill in the missing space between the ToC item and the page number with the correct number of dots unless all items in the list are the same length or the page numbers are not right justified. You can't even put in a different number of dots on each line manually. Every leader in the ToC must be the same.

For this we use leader tabs, as part of the style used by the table of contents. If you are using the default style, called TOC, then find it in the Styles panel, bring up the editor, and find the Tab Stops section. By default there will be a single tabstop at position 0 (measured from the right edge). The third control along sets the leader, and by default there is none. Click the down-arrow and select Tab Stop Leader Character to get dots. Alternatively, click the "..." at the end of the row to get a little panel that also lets you pick which character is used for the leader, in case you want arrows or something.

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Hyperlinks are the main missing feature, for me.

I've found how to format external link text, but can't

  • Create internal bookmarks  (and links to those bookmarks)
  • The TOC doesn't interact (which would be nice).
  • Display text different to the link target (so I've got a messy YouTube link in my document, rather than "watch this video", or a meaningful title).

Also ... I'm an occasional user of publishing software, and I'm coming here from Apple's iBooks Author, which I used to produce my BA dissertation.

A feature that were really useful on that were the "two way" footnote references  - either to the bottom of the page or to a table at the rear, with a link back from the reference page), which I could use for the academic referencing. These incremented and renumbered when I inserted a new one (workable, although it was a bit clunky).
A similar table of figures was necessary for illustrations.

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TOCs and TOC formatting (leaders etc) is one area where InDesign's process frustrates the hell out of me to the point I stopped using it and manually set up TOCs (which isn't much better but at least is predictable). Looks like the TOC panel in this verison of the Publisher is still a WIP (not easy to see how it works just by looking at it / trying to apply things to selected text), but this is an area where Affinity should spend a lot of time if needed to create a really robust but simple-to-use TOC system. This is an area where they can stand out and innovate IMO.

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  • 11 months later...

I am unable to get the Table of Contents to link to the pages of the document at all -- not automatically, not by manually adding hyperlinks that go to anchors that I've created.  I am using Affinity Publisher on Windows 10.  Any help would be appreciated.

That said, I really like Publisher.  Over all, it is an elegantly designed program that makes layout a greater joy than ever.

Thank you in advance for any suggestions on the TOC.

 

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With some trial and error I have discovered that the numbers on the highest level titles (chapter titles, in this case) link properly to the pages they reference.  These titles themselves (the words) do not link to anything.  All of the subtitles and their numbers sometimes act as links and sometimes don't, but when they do, they all go to one of two pages -- page 12 or page 13, in an 88-page document.

Are there any plans to support TOC links for lower-level titles?  If so, is there a publishable time frame for this?  (Or does it work now, and I'm just missing something?)

I like Publisher a lot more than my previous layout program, but I may have to go back because of this issue, and because of publishing capabilities.  It would help a lot if we could export to ePub, and even more to KPF.  But this TOC issue may be the thing that stops the show.

Again, thank you for any information or help.

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8 hours ago, JCEyre said:

With some trial and error I have discovered that the numbers on the highest level titles (chapter titles, in this case) link properly to the pages they reference.  These titles themselves (the words) do not link to anything.  All of the subtitles and their numbers sometimes act as links and sometimes don't, but when they do, they all go to one of two pages -- page 12 or page 13, in an 88-page document.

Are there any plans to support TOC links for lower-level titles?  If so, is there a publishable time frame for this?  (Or does it work now, and I'm just missing something?)

All of the page numbers in the TOC, regardless of the "level" of their titles, should link now. None of the titles should, unless you've done something to add the links manually.

As some of your lower-level entries don't work at all, and those that do go to the wrong pages, you might have done something wrong, but without your files (PDF and .afpub) I can't begin to guess what you might have done.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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  • 3 weeks later...

HI,

 I am trying to make the table of contents link to sections in the booklet and have the final PDF have links that work. Right now I have the hyper links in the table of contents BUT they don't work in the created PDF. I have the box checked in the export area for hyperlinks to be exported with the document. Does this feature not work yet? Thanks, Carol

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4 hours ago, Sunshine Kid said:

I am trying to make the table of contents link to sections in the booklet and have the final PDF have links that work. Right now I have the hyper links in the table of contents BUT they don't work in the created PDF. I have the box checked in the export area for hyperlinks to be exported with the document. Does this feature not work yet?

It should be working, Carol.

Note that Publisher only makes the page number a hyperlink in the TOC, not the text of TOC entry.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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28 minutes ago, Sunshine Kid said:

Will try that later. Do you know if the text will ever be used instead since that is larger for folks to see that its a link than the number? Thanks, Carol

I know that linking the actual text as well as the page number has been requested. No one but Serif knows whether it will be implemented, or when.

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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Okay I tried just using the page numbers and that worked BUT without hovering over the numbers you can't tell that its a link so I made it underlined and a blue so it looks like a link.

Problem now is that I can save the PDF spreads and the links work BUT if you save the PDF as single pages the software shows this error message

An error occurred while exporting to:......      How can I export to single page with links? Thanks, Carol

    (location of file on desktop)

 

 

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