headings and TOC madness

[WG, LI]

Hi all,

I've been down this road before, on a similar problem, which you all have
been kind enough to help me with already.

I include the corresponding chapter names in my page headers using the
Insert>Field command and "StyleRef" to specify the contents. The problem I
have had before is recurring - when I insert the field, nothing is placed in
it. I was advised earlier to look above the heading of interest and make sure
that no breaks are formatted, because Word is dutifully inserting the
contents of the first line in the section with that style. I thought I was
certain that there were no lines in front of the title, but I'm still getting
no information in spots.

Now, when I create the TOC, I get another interesting effect. Say my chapter
2 is entitled "Introduction". When I create the TOC, the title "Introduction"
is a line or two above the chapter number, with tab leaders inserted between
the title and number.

I'm sure that these two things are related somehow. I think it this means
that there are stray formatted lines or characters near my chapter headings,
but I can't for the life of me see anything. I've deleted section breaks and
re-inserted them ad nauseum, reformatted lines in the vicinity of the breaks
and chapter headings. I even took a suggestion that I read to delete all of
the section breaks and re-insert them one by one, but I'm getting no further
along in fixing the issue.

Please excuse the winded explanation - I hope my exasperation is plain to
see. I'd really appreciate some clear-thinking person to try and straighten
me out here. The content of my document has been settled for several days,
and it's this blasted formatting that's delaying me - I know, not a new story.

Thanks to all for reading this far and for any help you can provide.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I'll just add a couple of pointers for further investigation. When I've been
sent documents that had StyleRef/TOC problems like this, the stray
formatting was often applied to a paragraph that had been formatted as
Hidden (but you'll see that if you have nonprinting characters displayed) or
was in a table cell with Exact row height and was below the visible portion
of the cell. Or the formatting was applied to the end-of-cell marker in a
table, while the actual text in the cell, terminating with an unnecessary
paragraph mark, was formatted with a different style. Searching for the
style using Find may or may not be helpful in such cases; you have to be
very alert to see that the Find is stopping not where you think it is but
where you think there isn't anything!

 

[WG, LI]

Thanks, Suzanne. Running a find on styles is helping, and in fact there was a
formatted section break hiding behind a table, and it was throwing things
off. Actually, it's one of those tables that displays a 4-way arrow in the
upper left corner when you move the cursor near the corner of the table. I
don't know quite what that means, but I've noticed that they're more trouble
than they're worth, and seem to pop up for me when I paste in tables from
another document.

Correcting it has solved much of the problem, but there's still more to do.
My TOC issue is still there for that one heading, but I'll keep after it.

Thanks again for the help.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Such a table is "wrapped." Double-click on the table handle (top left
corner) to open the Table Properties dialog. On the Table tab, change the
text wrapping to None. The problem with the table handle is that, if you use
it to move the table (even if you only nudge it inadvertently), the table
becomes wrapped; that means there's no easy way to drag and drop a table to
a different position in the document without having to "unwrap" it
afterward. Worse still, in Word 2007, I'm told, double-clicking on the table
handle doesn't open the Table Properties dialog any more, either, making it
even more useless.

FWIW, if you work in Normal view, you won't see the table handle, which
protects you from inadvertently nudging the table.

 

[WG, LI]

Thanks again, Suzanne. Once again, your advice is invaluable. I finished my
document with a little bit of 'punting', but this will definitely help me
going forward.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Glad I could help.