Table of Contents Mystery Happenings

[Tango Mike]

Using MacBook Pro with OS 10.6.3 and Word 2008, I've built over 50 TOC's with links that work flawlessly from the TOC to the chapters and from the chapters back to the TOC.



I'm helping someone out with his book manuscript and the time has come to build his TOC. I'm following exactly the same procedures I always have, and it's not working right.

My workflow: 1) bookmark all the chapter headings and the TOC title; 2) link the chapters in the TOC list to the chapter headings in the book; 3) link the chapter headings in the book back to the TOC. I just finished building a test document and it works perfectly.

But when I do exactly that in his manuscript, the link from the TOC listing to the chapter puts me at the page break at the end of the chapter prior to the chapter I want. And when the pointer is hovering over the TOC link, the link reads "Current Document" rather than the name of the bookmark.

And here's the really strange part. When I check the bookmark listing, Word has added a hidden bookmark that looks like this: _PREFACE_1 rather than the PREFACE that I named it. But if I select the PREFACE bookmark in the list and click on the Go To button, it takes me to the PREFACE heading where it's supposed to.

It appears that inserting the link in the TOC is the culprit, because immediately after clicking OK to insert the link, if I check the bookmark list, the hidden bookmark has been created in addition to the original one.

I've tried this multiple times without success, and I'm stumped. Can anyone tell me what's wrong and how to fix it?

Thanks for any assistance.

[macropod]

Any chance of attaching a extract from the document to a post? The extract should contain both the TOC and enough of the body to demonstrate the issue.

[Tango Mike]

Thanks for your interest in helping out.

The attached Word document illustrates what's happening. The Preface link in the TOC takes you to the PREFACE because there's nothing prior to it in this extract. But the Chapter One link puts you at the page break at the end of the Preface rather than at the chapter ONE heading. Both of these bookmarks began as PREFACE and ONE, and as soon as the link was inserted, Word added the hidden bookmarks _PREFACE_1 and _ONE_1. Sometimes I've seen _PREFACE_2 and _ONE_2 in addition to the first ones.

As mentioned in my original post, I can open a new Word document and create a fully functioning TOC with nothing like this happening. Today I tried an experiment by creating a "template" with the TOC working, and copied/pasted the contents of my friend's book into the chapters with the thought that I might bypass the problem.

But as soon as I began using the links, they generated the same hidden bookmarks and always took me to the page break at the end of the previous chapter rather than the chapter heading of the one I wanted.

Could his file be corrupted in some way?

Thanks for taking a look at this.

[macropod]

Hi Mike,

The explanation is that the page break is included in the 'ONE' bookmark's range. A simple solution is to delete the page break and format the Heading1 Style with the 'page break before' attribute. That way, every Heading1 paragraph will automatically start on a new page.

[Tango Mike]

Fantastic! I'll try that right now.

One more question, if you don't mind: When creating the links, I have the choice of locating a heading or a bookmark. I've always inserted bookmarks in the chapter headings and then linked to them. I also use the the Heading1 style for the chapter headings. Can I skip the bookmarking and simply link to the location of each chapter heading in the Heading1 style?

[macropod]

Hi Mike,

Frankly, I'm not even sure why you're bothering with hyperlinks when Word can create a linked TOC automatically and, by default, TOC entries function the same as hyperlinks (except that TOCs don't use fancy colours & underlining) with the added benefit of including page #s if you want them. The only possible benefit of the hyperlinks is that their text need not be the same as that of the target.

But to answer your question, yes, Word can hyperlink link directly to a particular heading.

[Tango Mike]

Thanks for the explanation, and since this it a Word forum, I didn't bring up the endgame, which is conversion to eBook format. I think I remember reading that Word's auto-generated TOC doesn't convert well well to epub or mobi, and the answer is to let the conversion program auto-generate the TOC from the Heading1 style.

I don't know if you are into eBooks, but epub and mobi handle TOC generation differently, and I've learned through doing about 30 conversions that manually generating a TOC in addition to the auto-generated one has benefits for ease of navigation on a variety of e-Readers.

As a Super Moderator, you've undoubtedly read this many times, but I'll say it anyway. The expertise and willingness to share it here and on the Calibre and Sigil forums is an incredible resource for those of us who seem unable to keep from getting in over our heads. I really appreciate it.

[macropod]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the feedback and explanation.

No, I'm not into eBooks but, if I were and I was doing the conversion regularly, I'd probably write a macro that: Inserts a Word TOC; converts the Word TOC to plain text; and converts each converted TOC entry to a hyperlink, all in one go.

[Tango Mike]

Ohmigosh! You have just cost me hours of pondering how I might be able to do that without having a clue about macro's . . . although I tried once and found that all the information online referenced either Word for PC and/or different versions of Word than the one I have. None of the screens/menu items looked like the ones I have, so I opened a beer. It might have been a Foster's, as a matter of fact. And I'm just guessing, but the series you are talking about sounds like advanced-degree "macro-ing." Maybe one day . . .

[macropod]

Hi Mike,

Office 2008 doesn't support macros ... so you'd have to upgrade to Office 2011 before it'd be worth worrying about.