Custom TOC

[Michele]

Hi All~

I'm hoping someone can share their "best practice" when creating a
custom TOC in an agreement using outline numbering.

We are using Word 2000 and an example of our doc format is as follows:

1.1 Loan Agreements. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy
river.

1.1 is bold.
Loan Agreements is bold and underlined.
The paragraph does not have any formatting.
Need to insert the hidden paragraph mark after Loan Agreements to avoid
bringing the entire paragraph into the TOC.
TOC formatting we do not want 1.1 Loan Agreements to be bold.

If we create a style that is linked to an outline level and set the
"bold" attribute in the numbering dialog box, then TOC number 1.1
appears bold which we don't want.

Changing the attributes in the TOC style - doesn't seem to make a
difference.

If we set the bold and underline attributes in the actual style and not
the numbering dialog box - then the TOC is fine without bold. However,
we run into to a problem with this method in that the entire paragragh
becomes bold and underlined if the hidden paragraph mark gets deleted.
Our users freak out!

We are using Word native numbering - no third-party tool.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.
Michele

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Michele:

After all their hard work to bring local formatting into the TOC, and YOU
want to get rid of it

The simplest way is simply to select the TOC after you have generated it and
hit Ctrl + SpaceBar to remove the extra formatting.

I wouldn't use hidden paragraph marks for the same reason you mention, but
not only do users freak out, so do documents -- it's a source of document
corruption, particularly if you use hidden paragraph marks in combination
with tracked changes.

I would be tempted to use a Character style to apply the Underline, and set
the Numbering font bold, the way you are doing. That way you get a bold
number and an underlined lead-in without having those properties applied to
the rest of the paragraph.

The bold and underline will be copied through to the TOC, teach the users to
remove it with Control + Spacebar. You also need to warn them to turn off
"Automatically Update Fields" in Tools>Options>Print. That has other
implications: their page numbers may be wrong, and so might their
cross-references.

The other way around is to use TC Fields. Look them up in the Help.
Because the text within the TC field is independent of the text in the
heading itself, you can format it any way you like, which means you can use
local formatting in the heading.

I shy away from TC fields because they are a lot more work to put them in,
and a much larger user training requirement to get them to use them reliably
in service. However, if you can train your users to use them correctly,
they result in fully automatic and reliable TOCs and were invented to solve
exactly this sort of problem!

Hope this helps

Hi All~

I'm hoping someone can share their "best practice" when creating a
custom TOC in an agreement using outline numbering.

We are using Word 2000 and an example of our doc format is as follows:

1.1 Loan Agreements. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy
river.

1.1 is bold.
Loan Agreements is bold and underlined.
The paragraph does not have any formatting.
Need to insert the hidden paragraph mark after Loan Agreements to avoid
bringing the entire paragraph into the TOC.
TOC formatting we do not want 1.1 Loan Agreements to be bold.

If we create a style that is linked to an outline level and set the
"bold" attribute in the numbering dialog box, then TOC number 1.1
appears bold which we don't want.

Changing the attributes in the TOC style - doesn't seem to make a
difference.

If we set the bold and underline attributes in the actual style and not
the numbering dialog box - then the TOC is fine without bold. However,
we run into to a problem with this method in that the entire paragragh
becomes bold and underlined if the hidden paragraph mark gets deleted.
Our users freak out!

We are using Word native numbering - no third-party tool.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.
Michele

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Michele]

Hello John:

I apologize for the delay in responding back. Thank you so much for
your reply. Yes! Your suggestion was helpful and it worked. So
basically, training the users to in fact use the ctrl+spacebar after
inserting the TOC is the key here. I'll see how they do with this
before considering the TC fields!

Thanks again!
Michele