TOC numbering won't obey style

[Kamran]

I'm using a TOC in a document with Headings 1-3. The headings are Arial bold
font, but I want the TOC to be in Times New Roman regular. I can get the
text the way I want it, but the heading numbering in the TOC keeps reverting
back to Arial bold. Is there any way to overcome this? Thanks...

 

[Margaret Aldis]

Make sure your headings (and TOC entries) are formatted using the style,
rather than direct font formatting. (If it's just automatic numbers that are
misbehaving, it could be that you have a font applied just to the paragraph
mark.)

Select the heading paragraphs (use triple click to pick up the whole
paragraph including the marker) and press Ctrl - Space (reset to default
paragraph font) - does that solve the problem in the TOC?

If the heading is then not in the font you want it, modify the heading
styles to set the font you need.

 

[tjtjjtjt]

You need to alter the TOC styles to look the way you want them to.
Bring up the TOC Box. There should be a button for Modify. Pick a Style from
the list and alter it.

tj

 

[Kamran]

Thanks to both of you. I had done all those things, and it wouldn't work. I
finally figured out to modify the style, go into Format > Numbering >
Customize, and delete the font name, attribute (bold) and size from the boxes
and click OK all the way out. Weird. I can't remember ever having to do
that before. But then again, this is the first time I've been using Word
2003.

 

[Kamran]

You'll never believe it. All I had to do was click on one of the heading
numbers (so that all the fields for that level number get shaded), press
Ctrl+Spacebar, and it removed all extraneous character formatting that kept
getting carried over into the TOC.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Thanks for the feedback!

 

[Kamran]

You're welcome. I want to also mention, because I found it very interesting,
that selecting the whole paragraph of the heading and pressing Ctrl+Spacebar
didn't do the trick. I had to select the number field on the heading to be
able to remove extraneous formatting.

 

[Margaret Aldis]

Hi Kamran

Thanks for this additional information. It seems that even when you set the
font family and bold/italic setting of the number via the (numbering format
of) the style, the TOC will still pick them up as if they were direct
formatting. The Ctrl-S trick on the number resets the font for the numbering
format, but I'm not sure how stable your style will be after this - when I
tried to replicate this I got inconsistent information about the font of the
number (displayed correctly as Arial, but showing Times in the Styles pane
preview and Font dialog box), and finally a corrupt document which crashed
every time I tried to look at the style :-(

Take care

 

[Kamran]

Hi Margaret,

That's interesting. My TOC styles are in Times font and the Headings
themselves are in Arial. Initially the section numbers in the TOCs were
showing up in Arial and the rest of the Heading text in Times, even though
when I selected the whole TOC and hit Ctrl+Space, the font would reset
properly. I found that I had to redefine the Heading style after removing
font formatting from the number in order to eliminate font problems in the
TOC. My TOC styles have been stable once I did that.

I also tried using the \*Charformat switch in the TOC field, but that set
all my TOC styles to the same font as TOC1, and I like my TOC1 style in bold
and larger font than the rest of the styles.

I've been using Word for years and never came across this situation. I
suspect this all arose because I'm using a document someone else made and
using it as a template for a new one.

So in your case, you mean you go into Modify Style and the program crashes?

 

[Margaret Aldis]

Hi Kamran

Redefining the number font via the Heading style is I'm sure the safer way
to do this (selecting the number and doing anything seems to invoke the
change via the list template.) So long as you set the font to match the
heading style, the TOC seems to work OK - you don't actually need to get it
back to paragraph default (blank) settings.

Yes, I did get to a complete crash when I first used Ctrl-Space on the
number, and then went to look at the style. But I had already poked a stick
through Word's numbering cage several times during the session <g>. I
suggest if you have a working document you leave well alone