How To Create A Table of Contents

[Jonny]

It would be nice to be able to find a how-to on creating a Table of Contents (TOC). I have looked at a number of them and they all have flaws. I find the whole process to be non-intuitive.

The basic concept appears to be to select Insert>Table of Context and Index>Table of Contents, Index or Bibliography… When I select that, I receive a configuration box with nothing to do but to select Close.

Anyone have similar problems and has found a solution?

I am using version 6.3.3.2 on Debian 10 and Xfce 4.12.

[Jonny]

I’m still laughing at my discovery. Evidently, the programmers are struggling to properly program the pop-up windows to fit the screen resolution. I never saw an OK button because it had been hidden off the page to the right. Once I was able to drag the window to the left, there is was. What poor program formatting.

The second problem I found was that the headings one uses, if other than 1,2 or 3, are not automatically recognized. That’s just dumb since the the TOC is created based upon using any style named as a heading. In Writer, one must manually set the levels to the headings one wishes to use. Bummer.

I hope these discoveries can help another person struggling with non-intuitive software.

[Grantler]

Read @ajlittoz’ comment thoroughly.

[ajlittoz]

A software appears non-intuitive when ine does not make the effort to read the documentation.

At minimum, the built-in help is a valuable source of information. It is not a tutorial, it is very concise as a reminder should be and one has to collect all the bits and pieces to build the big picture. But it is there in every decent installation.

A much more detailed and progressive source is the official user guide. One again, you must read a few pages (do you drive without lessons first?).

Now for the oversized window hiding important controls, the cause may be an incomplete dependency installation. LO has specific modules for GTK, KDE5, KF5 and perhaps others graphic elements. I don’t remember what’s Xfce basis, but it should work with GTK, at least after some initial uses of LO to adjust window sizes.

The TOC pop-up dialog has a combo box labelled Evaluate to level in Create Index or Table of Contents section. This allows one to limit the depth of TOC to the desired level. Though the default is 10 (all levels), you might have unintentionally changed the value to 3 during your fiddlings.

Creating a TOC is very simple when you’re satisfied with the defaults. Playing with the controls, you can design very complex and sophisticated layouts. I recommend you first learn with simple default TOCs before trying custom layouts so that you understand thoroughly the effects of each control.