Using Libreoffice 24.6.2 on linux mint. I am trying to create a Table of Contents for a novel. what i want is a two column table with the left column containing the Chapter Numbers and the second column containing the Chapter Titles. I have read the documentation of everything I can get it to find about tables of content, but I have not succeeded in getting a table that looks like what one might see in a printed novel. Is this even possible with Libreoffice 24? I have tied every configuration I can thnk of and still can’t accomplish it.
I’ll only sketch the solution as you didn’t give a full formal specification.
The default TOC is very close to what you want.
I assume that your novel is already structured as expected by the TOC engine. I remind you here about the rules: chapter heading paragraphs must be styled Heading 1. Chapter numbering must be enabled in Tools>Heading Numbering. You can add “fancy decoration” to chapter number like word "CHAPTER " (with a trailing space) and " - " as separators in Tools>Heading Numbering configuration.
TOC items (“lines”) are generated according to instructions given in Insert>TOC & Index>TOC, Index or Bibliography (or right-click in existing TOC and Edit Table to change afterwards). Go to Entries tab and look at Structure & Formatting. By default this is:
LS N# E T # LE
You’re interested in N# E for the chapter number and entry (heading text).
To give the TOC entry a tabular look, put the cursor in the box between these descriptors and press Tab Stop button. You have inserted a tab between the chapter number and the heading. The other settings allow you to define the tab stop position.
TOC entries corresponding to Heading 1 are formatted according to paragraph style Contents 1. In case your chapter headings may need several lines, adjust First Line and Before Text indents to be consistent with your tab stop above, i.e. Before at same distance as the tab stop and First line as negative of this distance (to keep the number at left margin).
Your specification omits mention of page number. If you don’t want page numbers in your TOC, delete both T and # descriptors at end.
PS: this is guaranteed to be stable and persistent if you save .odt.