Table of Contents Not Formatted Correctly

[Suzanne]

Please help before I lose my mind. I have created a Table of Contents that looks just fine except that a few of the entries do not line up correctly. For example, I have Fruit. Under that are 1. Apples, then A. Delicious B. Macintosh and C. Granny Smith. The table lof contents looks like this:
FRUIT
1. Apples
A. Delicious
B. Macintosh
C. Granny Smith

Everything is aligned properly in the body of the document. What would cause those extra spaces? I can take out the spaces, but when I update the table, it goes right back to the bad format. Can anyone help?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Is there an extra tab in the heading in the text?

Please help before I lose my mind. I have created a Table of Contents

that looks just fine except that a few of the entries do not line up
correctly. For example, I have Fruit. Under that are 1. Apples, then A.
Delicious B. Macintosh and C. Granny Smith. The table lof contents looks
like this:

FRUIT
1. Apples
A. Delicious
B. Macintosh
C. Granny Smith

Everything is aligned properly in the body of the document. What would

cause those extra spaces? I can take out the spaces, but when I update the
table, it goes right back to the bad format. Can anyone help?

 

[Jay Freedman]

This could be a case of "Jason tabs" (like the character in the movie,
you can kill them but they won't stay dead). See
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/TOCJasonTabs.htm

 

[Suzanne]

I tried each step and nothing worked. Finally, the macro worked and now everything is lined up correctly. Unfortunately, it took away the dots before the page numbers so now they are not lined up. Example:
Apples 2
Oranges 3
Pineapples 4
Should be:
Apples..........2
Oranges.......3
Pineapples....4
So close and yet so far! Anything else I can do?

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

I'm not exactly sure WHY it happens, but I can tell you that it might be an
artifact of using the built-in tab settings. For some reason, in creating
the ToC for that line, Word is arbitrarily placing the tab to the right of
where it places it for the other two lines.

For the heading level used by Granny Smith, if you either a) use a space
instead of a tab, or b) explicitly set a tab for that style (e.g., Heading
3?) that controls where Delicious, Macintosh and Granny align, then the
problem won't occur.

--
Herb Tyson MS MVP
Please respond in the newsgroups so everyone can follow along.
http://www.herbtyson.com

Please help before I lose my mind. I have created a Table of Contents

that looks just fine except that a few of the entries do not line up
correctly. For example, I have Fruit. Under that are 1. Apples, then A.
Delicious B. Macintosh and C. Granny Smith. The table lof contents looks
like this:

FRUIT
1. Apples
A. Delicious
B. Macintosh
C. Granny Smith

Everything is aligned properly in the body of the document. What would

cause those extra spaces? I can take out the spaces, but when I update the
table, it goes right back to the bad format. Can anyone help?

 

[Suzanne]

Success! Thanks so much.

I'm not exactly sure WHY it happens, but I can tell you that it might be an
artifact of using the built-in tab settings. For some reason, in creating
the ToC for that line, Word is arbitrarily placing the tab to the right of
where it places it for the other two lines.

For the heading level used by Granny Smith, if you either a) use a space
instead of a tab, or b) explicitly set a tab for that style (e.g., Heading
3?) that controls where Delicious, Macintosh and Granny align, then the
problem won't occur.

--
Herb Tyson MS MVP
Please respond in the newsgroups so everyone can follow along.
http://www.herbtyson.com

that looks just fine except that a few of the entries do not line up
correctly. For example, I have Fruit. Under that are 1. Apples, then A.
Delicious B. Macintosh and C. Granny Smith. The table lof contents looks
like this:
cause those extra spaces? I can take out the spaces, but when I update the
table, it goes right back to the bad format. Can anyone help?

 

[Martha]

I use tables of contents a lot for long documents. Are you using the built-in
STYLES for headings, for example is Fruit heading 1? I always click on
Options before generating the table to see what's been selected automatically
and what level it has been assigned.

After the Table of Contents has been generated, I look at the STYLE that
word has assigned to each level, for example TOC 1, TOC 2, and I make
indentation adjustments if needed. Usually I need to move the page number
more to the left. After adjusting, I modify the style so the changes will be
permanent for the document if I generate a new Table of Contents.

So far, that is working fine, even in the new very buggy (IMHO) Microsoft
Office 2008.

 

[Stefan Blom]

Suzanne,

See if adjusting the first tab stop position (for the text following the
paragraph number) of the appropriate TOC style helps.