I am writing a book and the index of H1+ is not showing up on my TOC. Please help. I have followed the steps. I have checked to make sure that my H1 is the chapters. I have watched some Youtube Videos. I have two sections in my book with title pages, I am wondering if that is the issue. It is 40K words. Is that the issue?
OS Microsoft 11 Home
LS [Version 25.2.1.2, tag libreoffice-25.2.1.2]
Save Format odt
Being Honest copy toc error.odt (36.2 KB)
Writer can handle easily 1000+ page books with very sophisticated layout. 40K words should be around 50 pages, so well within its capability.
It is difficulty to answer your question without minimal technical information: OS name, LO version (don’t answer “latest”, it does not mean anything) and save format (native .odt vs. alien .doc(x)).
Ideally, edit your question (click on … below it then on the “pencil” icon) so that all information is available without scrolling. If you really can’t, press Comment under my post. Don’t use Suggest a solution which is truly reserved for … solutions (this site is not a forum).
For best advice, attach a reduced sample of your book. Make sure the problem is still present.
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Thank you. So I reduced my book to some of the chapters and their headings and tried to add the TOC, it didn’t work for me. I must be doing some thing wrong. I would love any help you or the community could offer. Thank you very much.
I see the document has been brought in (pasted) from Word. There is more that could be done to clean up the document such as putting all the used styles back in a hierarchical order, removing blank paragraphs, etc.
It is easiest to open a new document, paste as text only, apply Body Text style to everything and then go through and apply Heading and other styles as needed
Open the Sidebar to the Styles pane, Paragraph styles
- Right click Heading 1 style and select Edit style
- In the dialogue that appears, select the Outline & List tab and set the Outline level to 1. OK
- Right click Heading 2 style and select Edit style
- In the dialogue that appears, select the Outline & List tab and set the Outline level to 2. OK
- Right click the TOC and select Update table of contents
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As @EarnestAl points out, your document was at some time in the past processed by M$ Word which added its own format idiosyncrasies. This is shown by the wealth of ListLabel xxx character styles and WWNumyy list styles.
They were created by the conversion process to cope with differences between format specifications. This alone indicates structural damage to the document which is n ow improper to efficient and effective formatting and layout. But it is also aggravated by your attempts to restructure paragraph styles, notably the Heading n family you made dependent on style normal1 (perhaps again resulting from the conversion). Doing so, you removed the attribute identifying Heading n as members of outline hierarchy. Therefore, they are not collected when you request a TOC.
I note also you inserted a frame to hold the TOC heading which is style Heading 1. There are 2 flaws here:
-
Heading 1 paragraphs are intended to be collected inside the TOC
The TOC heading is usually not echoed in the TOC itself. You create a kind of vicious circle or self-reference (in other circumstances, this can degenerate into a recursive infinite loop). - frame contents is an independent document with no ordering relationship to the main flow
The frame will be scanned in an unspecified order relative to main flow and frame entries will appear in arbitrary order in the TOC (not in page order; the order is tightly tied to editing history).
Last but not least, you document is heavily plagued with direct formatting, either by manual stylistic variation application or vertical spacing with(in addition heterogeneous) empty paragraphs. This first factor is an immediate consequence of the lack of character styles in DOCX.
Fixes
Learn how to use Writer with styles. See the Writer Guide.
Restore the factory built-in style configuration by starting with a new blank document.
Clean the structure damage by copying your existing text and pasting it as unformatted in the blank document. Then restyle everything.
PS:
I note that your “faulty” TOC frame is styled Inline Heading. There has been some recent improvement about this feature in 25.2.x but this version has not yet bubbled up in my distribution. Consequently, I have no experience with it. Nevertheless, inline headings are advanced usage. I don’t recommend you use them until you master Writer for more common layouts.
Thank you! That worked. Wow. Super helpful.