What are TOC-qualifying headings?

[AFY7]

In Affinity Puplisher, I defined a new paragraph style for my chapter titles (called "ChapTitle"). I want to generate a table of contents using this new style, but the new style, ChapTitle, is grayed out and cannot be selected.

What am I doing wrong?

[GarryP]

Where in the UI is the style “grayed out”?
The styles are usually greyed out in the TOC Panel when you are not editing a TOC in a text frame. (You need to insert a TOC to start editing it.)
If this isn’t the case, could you supply a screen-grab including the TOC Panel and the text frame you are currently editing please?

[AFY7]

5 minutes ago, GarryP said:

Where in the UI is the style “grayed out”?
The styles are usually greyed out in the TOC Panel when you are not editing a TOC in a text frame. (You need to insert a TOC to start editing it.)
If this isn’t the case, could you supply a screen-grab including the TOC Panel and the text frame you are currently editing please?

Gary,

I've now managed to insert the TOC as planned. Of course, the cursor must be in a text frame to do this. However, I cannot select my custom paragraph style until I first attempt to insert the TOC and fail, getting the message "No table of contents entries found ." It's odd, but at that point all the style options light up and can be selected and unselected. Then, I'm good to go.

Thanks.

[GarryP]

You’re welcome.
If I remember correctly, inserting a TOC will only do automatic checks for the standard “Heading” styles, so if you are not using those you will probably get the message you saw - because there’s nothing in the TOC yet. It’s not a failure, it’s just the software saying it can’t find anything with the already selected styles (by default, the standard "Heading" styles), which is fine as you can just de-select the standard ones and select what you want from the list.

[AFY7]

32 minutes ago, GarryP said:

You’re welcome.
If I remember correctly, inserting a TOC will only do automatic checks for the standard “Heading” styles, so if you are not using those you will probably get the message you saw - because there’s nothing in the TOC yet. It’s not a failure, it’s just the software saying it can’t find anything with the already selected styles (by default, the standard "Heading" styles), which is fine as you can just de-select the standard ones and select what you want from the list.

Gary,

The TOC will generate for me using the custom paragraph style I used for chapter titles. I tested this again by deleting all my TOC settings, then selecting TOC 1, and clicking to insert the TOC. Immediately the selections defaulted to Heading 1 and Heading 2 and "No table of contents entries found" was displayed in the text frame. Now, however, any style could be selected, so I unselected Heading 1 and Heading 2 and selected my custom style. The TOC was then successfully inserted.

[GarryP]

Ah, okay, I stand corrected. Thanks.