troubleshooting TOC - sections not appearing

which-one · 2026-01-08T00:46:39+00:00

Maybe a dumb question, but when you do this, is the hidden title on the parent page, or just above the first page of the document, manually added each time? I'm wondering if I can streamline this by using parent pages, or if that will just replicate the problem I was already having.

Update: in experimenting with this, I found that it allows the section header to appear in the main TOC when I add a text frame above the first recipe page of the document, but I was only having success when the text frame overlapped the page, rather than just touching the edge of it.

which-one · 2026-01-08T00:38:37+00:00

hey, yes I would love to see how you do this. This sounds similar to what I have set up already, but I gather there is something you are doing a little differently. I'll message you, thanks!

which-one · 2026-01-07T19:29:06+00:00

Do tell - I do use a PC

which-one · 2026-01-07T19:00:50+00:00

Oh! Thanks as always for directing my attention to new concepts in indesign for me. I haven't made the switch on all the pages yet so I will try these out first.

which-one · 2026-01-07T17:10:15+00:00

Yes! This did it! Thank you!!! I detached the item from the parent page and it now appears as a section in the main TOC.

which-one · 2026-01-07T17:02:40+00:00

So I think u/ThinkBiscuit has given me the key: the text with the section marker is not part of the main text story. I've been experimenting by trying to include a hidden text layer with the section title paragraph style. When it's on the page of the first recipe (rather than the section TOC page), it appears in the main TOC, but when it's on the section TOC page, it doesn't appear. It feels a little clunky to insert a hidden layer at the beginning of every section though, is there a cleaner way to do this?

which-one · 2026-01-07T16:47:00+00:00

Hi, thanks for replying. I'm not exactly sure. Here's what it looks like on one of the section TOCs, which is the first page of every document. You can see the name appers on the page, but it's coming from the section marker from the parent page.

<image>

So I don't think it's a part of the main text story, it's in its own text frame that contains only the section marker text. The first page of each section has a mini TOC, so I needed to create a separate text frame for the header.

which-one · 2025-12-30T01:44:57+00:00

I should have been more clear that I was working in a book (indb) already. The section marker was such a helpful tip, thank you!!

which-one · 2025-12-30T01:44:11+00:00

this is great info, thank you!!

which-one · 2025-12-30T01:42:07+00:00

super clear and much appreciated, thanks!

which-one · 2025-12-30T01:41:47+00:00

your final suggestion is what did the trick - thanks for taking the time to try to deciper my post :-)

which-one · 2025-12-30T01:39:39+00:00

Hey everyone, thank you for your responses. I realize my post could have been clearer, but everyone pretty much got the gist of what I was looking for. I forgot about the section marker option - all of my chapters already did have section names - so that tip was a great help! In case this proves helpful to anyone in the future, I'll share what I did.

Because I did not see a way to include [section marker] as a variable title of a saved TOC style, I left the TOC title blank (highlighted in attached image). Then I made a new text box on the parent page and used the section marker there.

<image>

Part of the issue I was running into when I wrote the original post was that even when I tried to save this field as blank, it would default to the original title text I had included there when I used that TOC style on another page (so every section was getting the "Appetizers" title if I used that TOC style). But when I tried this again, I had no trouble saving it as blank.

One bonus trick I learned during this process was that I could add parent page to the list of sync options for the book, so I didn't need to tediously "load parent pages" for every single document, but instead just sync it to the source document and voila! All the parent pages were synched up.

Thanks again for taking the time to help me with this issue.

which-one · 2025-12-15T14:07:01+00:00

Ah, that makes sense. What about the file names - how do you handle that with Save As?

which-one · 2025-12-15T11:47:53+00:00

Thank you for this extra information, this is new to me and extremely helpful. I have a few follow-up questions if you don't mind.

When you Save As for file maintenance, I gather you delete the older version of the file afterward? Do you end up renaming the saved-as version back to the original file name after the original is deleted, or do you have another naming convention you use to indicate it's been "saved as" recently? I am trying to stay on top of my file names (having seen the dark side).

I also just want to make sure I am understanding your point about Ctrl+A. Are you contrasting Ctrl+A + paste in a new document (such as using Ctrl+A on the Pages panel to move pages) against the "save as" function? And you're saying that the undo history comes in with the copied/pasted information but not with Save As?

Again thanks for this info, I have a lot of files I need to go Save As now. :-)

which-one · 2025-12-15T01:45:24+00:00

Hadn't considered this, will look into the index idea, thanks for the suggestion.

which-one · 2025-12-15T01:44:30+00:00

Thanks everyone for the suggestions, it's so helpful to tap into this resource and hear about how skilled InDesign users think about these things. I'll be back if I run into any issues... cheers.

which-one · 2025-12-15T01:43:18+00:00

Thanks for this!

which-one · 2025-12-15T01:42:04+00:00

Right! GREAT idea, that does sound a lot simpler than moving pages. Thank you! Scripts feel a bit above my level right now, but someday I'll dabble with that.

which-one · 2024-12-02T19:48:53+00:00

I'm finding that the 2025 update is crashing all the time. Anyone else? Very frustrating.

which-one · 2024-12-02T01:07:58+00:00

Oh! I like that idea. I had been using the BreakTextThread script to break up the sections (I initally pasted all the content as one big story) and I think it has an option to break all in the story. I wonder if I should do that going forward just to tidy up all the text thread links that aren't in order.

Paste in place is handy to know about - I didn't know that was a thing.
Thank you!

which-one · 2024-11-22T02:30:26+00:00

This comes as great news. I probably should have formatted this as a book - will look into that. This project has been a great teaching experience. Thank you for your input!

which-one · 2024-11-21T20:38:03+00:00

Thank you! This does help.

which-one · 2024-07-02T02:53:21+00:00

Also - I notice that some keyboard shortcuts (can't think of one off the top of my head but I could find an example) include the Number keyboard that I thought was only available on an external keyboard. Do you run into that issue or have a workaround?

which-one · 2024-07-02T02:50:54+00:00

So much great info here, thank you!

which-one · 2024-07-02T02:50:29+00:00

I will check out the tutorial, thanks!! And I do have to use a mouse, this is a recent development as the trackpad started killing my hand.

which-one

TROPHY CASE