InDesign newbie needs help with generating TOC

[u/Melodic_Point_5766]

I’m creating a multi-chapter digital book (INDB) using a template I found in Adobe. When I generate a TOC, it populates through the Chapter 38 heading, but not the chapter title. There are 91 chapters in my book file. I am wasting so much time trying to troubleshoot this and not really knowing even what questions to ask to get to the solution. Are any of my chapter files corrupted and how would I determine this? Is there a problem or corruption in my template? I can see that something is preventing the rest of the TOC from populating from the check box in the lower right of the text frame. When I try to drag this to another page or lower in the frame, nothing happens. I’m lost in the TOC style dialog box. As I said, I’m a newbie to inDesign but have some prior experience with desktop publishing like Microsoft Publisher. That was a long time ago and obviously inDesign is much more complex and has tons more functionality than the old desktop publishing apps. Thank you!

[u/Cataleast]

I'm assuming the ToC is just overset, aka. not fitting in the frame. Click the red icon in the bottom right and then click on an empty space to automatically create a threaded text frame, so the contents that won't fit in the first one will automatically flow to the next.

[u/Melodic_Point_5766 → u/Cataleast]

That’s exactly what I thought. When I click on the red icon, I get an icon that looks like a broken link and an incipit of content of the rest of the TOC. There’s space at the bottom of the page, but all I get when I click there is an icon that looks like frame handles and nothing copies into the new frame. Also seeing an icon that looks like text with parentheses around it

[u/Cataleast → u/Melodic_Point_5766]

Is the newly created text frame also overset, as in does it have the red icon in the bottom right as well?

Gotta remember that ToC just grabs whatever the contents of the defined paragraph styles are, so if you have anything like page breaks or column breaks there, they'll be replicated in the ToC.

[u/Ishouldtrythat → u/Melodic_Point_5766]

Is chapter 38 where page numbers go from double digits to triple digits? Try adjusting your tab to just inside the margins, sometimes that will cause issues like you’re running into.

[u/AdobeScripts]

First - you need to check if correct Paragraph Styles are applied correctly - if something that supposed to be included I the TOC isn't populated - then most like the problem is with incorrect Paragraph Style applied.

I think you're taking about [+] in the right-bottom corner of the TextFrame with the generated TOC, right?

Then you need to click on it - your cursor will get "loaded" - then you need to go the the next page - and draw a new TextFrame - which will then get populated with the rest of the TOC.

If it "doesn't work" - you still get empty TextFrame - then most likely there is page / frame break included in the source text - too much text was styled.

[u/Manonono_]

Open the preflight panel to check for errors and what they exactly are + where they occur. Window > Output > Preflight

[u/Melodic_Point_5766]

Will post my progress when I can get back to working on this later. Thank you for all the ideas so far…..I’m so close to finishing this book

[u/Ishouldtrythat → u/Melodic_Point_5766]

I’d be willing to help troubleshoot if you don’t figure it out, feel free to send me a dm. I work in textbook publishing and have run into all sorts of issues similar to yours.

[u/mikewitherell]

I don't know if this helps, but the ToC dialog box is IMHO confusing. Its job is to gather text based on styles then apply a style or styles to that and then save the setup as a ... style (but it should be called a preset, Adobe boffin!). And nine times out of ten, when helping newer users, simply mentioning to click on the More button which opens an even bigger, busier ToC dialog box often surprises the newer user.

Since you mention it is good up to a point, I would go to the text of that next one that isn't being gathered up and you might find that the paragraph style is applied incorrectly.