Table of Contents and Styles

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Guest

I have created 2 styles - Main_Heading and Sub_Heading. Those are the only 2
styles I want to display in the TOC - however when I go into modify Index and
Tables it defaults back to Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3.

Is there a way to have it stop doing that?
 
Hi Erika-

One Option: In the TOC dialog box, click the Options button. In the Options
dialog box, delete the numbers in the boxes for Heading 1, etc. Scroll as
necessary to locate your custom styles in the list and assign the appropriate
Level numbers to them.

HTH |:>)
 
Erika,

I have the same problem. When I make style selections on the TOC Options
dialog, they all disappear the next time I open the dialog. The only solution
I have found is to go through the list of styles carefully each time and set
the whole thing up again each time I modify a TOC.

Frankly, I think this is a Word bug, but you would have to do some testing
to find out when Word deletes your style selections. Is it only when you
click the Options button again? Or do the settings get destroyed whenever you
bring up the Index and Tables dialog itself. S. Barnhill's suggestion might
have merit, but seems to me that if Word deletes your style selections each
time you re-open the Options dialog, it's going to do it whether you selected
a custom style or a default heading.
 
This is Word's default behavior. I agree that it is frustrating and
inconsistent. The solution is to learn to get it right the first time or to
learn to edit the TOC field directly; for more, see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/TOCSwitches.htm

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
Ah, thanks Suzanne. This looks like the real solution. I confess I'm not much
of a coder dog, but I'm going to print this out & try to use it when I need
to tweak the TOC.
 
Hi Suzanne and John

FWIW, I think this behaviour applies only if you use Insert > Reference
(which inserts a new TOC, rather than modifying an existing one).

If you right click and use Edit Field, the field dialog opens with a button
to reopen the TOC dialog. Click and the TOC dialog opens with your current
options set - for instance, if you have added styles, the Levels dropdown
isn't shown, and clicking on Options shows the styles you have already
chosen.

(I'm currently using 2003, though I think this applied in 2002 as well.)

So I don't think it is a bug, but a logical distinction between a fresh TOC
(starting from system defaults) and editing an existing one. As usual, one
can gripe about the relative "discoverability", however!
 
Ah, cool. I never remember the Edit Field shortcut. But that makes sense.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
Thank you, Margaret. That's really useful, especially to someone like me who
is oddly resistant to learning the codeing necessary to force Word to sit up
and roll over. My problem, however, involves an interaction between Word and
RoboHelp. When I create a printed version of my online Help with Robo, I have
to reset the TOC every time, despite the fact that I have carefully selected
my choices in the template that is supposed to govern the output document.

I think that as applications are increasingly used in conjunction with other
applications, a behavior that might seem reasonable in the context of a
single application becomes more problematic in the context of the entire work
environment. Application designers will increasingly have to take into
account not simply the behavior of the product they are working on, but the
totality of possibilities when their product is used with others, obviously a
much more difficult requirement.

And don't get me started on what happens to the numbering styles when the
doc is printed in Word! Grrrr!!!
 

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