Table of Figures leaders screwed up

[Rahul]

Hi,

I just insered a Table of Figures and a Table of Tables.

I used styles in my documents and these turned out to be great. Only problem
is that on some lines in the TOF that scroll, the page number locations are
messed up.

As in usually I want:

Heading...............................................................12
or
Heading blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blahblah blah blah blah........................14

But this time I am getting

Heading blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah.14


Any idea how this happens? I tried to modify the default Table of Figures or
TOC styles but I'm not sure which setting exactly I should be playing with!

-Rahul

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

From your second example, I take it that you have given the TOC paragraph a
right indent. When you did so, were you careful not to move or delete the
tab stop at the right margin? I find it's well-nigh impossible to move the
indent marker without moving the tab stop with it, and then I have to drag
the tab stop back. If you accidentally dropped the tab stop off the ruler
while dragging...well, that might explain at least part of the problem.

 

[Rahul]

Hi Suzanne,

Thanks for you replies.

Well, here's the thing though: Some of my TOC/TOF Lines do indent correctly
even on wrapping to a second line because of a long Caption. The whole Table
seems to have a uniform style. So I'm not sure that's my problem. BTW, I
know about first line and hanging indents but what exactly are the Tab stop
settings good for? How do those work?

I've tried to repeatedly update the fields but the problem persists. Could
it be due to some sort of direct formatting to the Figure Captions etc.?

Is it possible to somehow post files on the forum etc. so that you / others
can have a look?

Thanks!

-Rahul

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

In that case the problem is usually caused by having a hanging indent tab
stop to the right of where a short TOC entry ends, causing the tab for the
page number to go there instead of the right margin. If the number is really
butting right up against the entry, try pressing Ctrl+Q in the entry (or
selecting the entire TOC field and pressing Ctrl+Q). Does that make any
difference.

 

[Rahul]

Hi Suzanne,

That was awesome! Thanks a lot. It was a tab-stop at 1". I saw it a million
times while I was debugging it but never realized that it was the source of
my troubles!!

I still have one more tab--stop in there but things do look good now. I'm
confused. To get a "normal" looking TOC / TOF etc. what settings do you
recommend? I understand indents but these Tab stops have me confused. How do
they work? Is this specific for leaders?


Thanks again!

-Rahul

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

When you create a TOC, Word automatically sets a right tab stop at the right
margin and inserts a tab character after each TOC entry. The TOC styles do
not have a hanging indent by default, but if you apply numbering to a TOC
style, a hanging indent will be created, or you may create a hanging indent
intentionally (as many of us often do).

The default when you set a hanging indent is for Word to insert a tab stop
at the hanging indent position; this can be changed by checking the
Compatibility Option: "Don't add automatic tab stop for hanging indent," but
then the text after a number in a numbered AutoText entry wouldn't be
aligned properly.

If your hanging indent is quite large, then it can happen that the TOC entry
is shorter than the space between the left margin and the automatic tab
stop. When this happens, the tab that should be going to the right margin
goes to the hanging indent position instead.

None of this seems to apply to the situation you illustrated in your
original post, however, since it's a runover line. In this case there must
have been another tab stop, perhaps set by an inadvertent click on the
ruler. Because TOC styles are set to update automatically, any change you
make in any TOC entry is made to the style itself (if that were not the
case, changes would be blown away the next time you updated the field). So I
can only guess you had an errant, inadvertent, extraneous tab stop, and that
removing it solved the problem.

There is another issue with TOCs, the "Jason tab" (see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/TOCJasonTabs.htm), but I don't think
that's at issue here.