Tables of contents can be created from the outline. So, what is the outline, and how to view it?
I am aware of heading levels and outline levels. I am curious whether the outline the screenshotted window refers to can actually be accessed.
A document outline is made of paragraphs which have been assigned an outline level in their paragraph style configuration. By default, only the Heading n styles are assigned to some outline level.
Unfortunately, there is no way to list which paragraph styles have a specific outline level nor to display those not in Text body level.
Membership to outline is customisable: assign a level to some paragraph style and it will appear in the TOC at the designated level. This allows to workaround some limitations of the list numbering feature.
Books frequently have chapters numbered Arabic and appendices Roman. Since numbering is homogeneous, you can’t have both in chapter numbering associated with Heading n. The trick is to create a “parallel” family Appendix n with the same properties as Heading n (the simplest way is to derive every Appendix n from the corresponding Heading n) but associated with a different list style. Note that the outline level property is not inherited when you derive a new style and must be reassigned.
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Just a pedant/technical note: this is not correct. The paragraph style’s “outline level” property is inherited just as any other property; you may experiment by assigning a level to, say, Default Paragraph Style, and check the derived styles.
However, when the outline level comes not from the paragraph style, but from outline numbering (“chapter numbering”) feature, it’s like “this paragraph style has its outline level set to what is defined in chapter numbering feature”, and then the derived paragraph style, having exactly the same “what is defined in chapter numbering feature” inherited value, but not being listed in the chapter numbering, rightfully has a different effective level compared to ancestor. (And to be precise, there’s even no “what is defined in chapter numbering feature” special property value, the control from chapter numbering feature works outside of the paragraph style properties level.)
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If I understand you right, Heading n has no “intrinsic” outline level property. It comes from chapter numbering. And this explains why the derived style has no outline level because only one paragraph style can be attached in chapter numbering.
I see it is impossible to force outline level once the paragraph style has been attached to chapter numbering (drop-down menu is grayed out). I didn’t understand where it cam from. Thanks for the explanation (chapter numbering takes precedence over style definition).
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So may I ask, where is “the control from chapter numbering feature”? Can it be viewed or edited anywhere? Thanks!
Go to Tools>Chapter Numbering. If you only use the Heading n mechanism to create your outline, all paragraph styles participating in the outline are quoted by the Paragraph style at each level. They can be changed here but I don’t see the reason why you would do this (apart when receiving and reviewing a badly styled document). Customise a specific Heading n instead.
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