Adobe FrameMaker 9: Adding Tabs to a Table of Contents, Part II

by Barbara Binder

Last week I talked about how to use the TOC Reference page to add the missing tab between a table of contents text entry and the page number that follows it. Here are a few more TOC tips:

• As a general rule, don't edit the text on a generated page. All of your edits will be lost should you update the book and the file is regenerated.
  
  
• If you want to have a title that will actually stay after you update your book, you have to ensure that the title is the first thing in the flow (titles usually are, so that's easy) and it is using a paragraph format that does not end in the suffix for the generated file. For example, TOC is the standard table of contents suffix, so you could call your contents title ContentsTitle, but not ContentsTitleTOC.
  
  
• If you want to remove the page numbers from a top level TOC entry:
  
  
  1. Choose View > Reference Pages.
     
     
  2. Navigate to the TOC Reference Page.
     
     
  3. Delete the building block <$pagenum> from the line with the same paragraph format as your top level TOC entry.
     
     
     
     
  4. Choose View > Body Pages.
     
     
  5. Update your book (or file).

• If you'd like to add the chapter numbers in front of the chapter titles in your table of contents (assuming the chapter titles are numbered with the <$chapnum> variable):
  
  
  1. Choose View > Reference Pages.
     
     
  2. Navigate to the TOC Reference Page.
     
     
  3. Type <$chapnum> and a space in front of the chapter title building block.
     
     
     
     
  4. Choose View > Body Pages.
     
     
  5. Update your book (or file).

When Create Hyperlinks is turned on, you can press Ctrl + Alt on your keyboard as you click on a table of contents entry to follow the hyperlink into the file. If it isn't turned on, you'll need to right-click your TOC in your book window and choose Set up Table of Contents. Then select Create Hypertext Links.

***

If you are new to FrameMaker and want to get up to speed quickly, join IconLogic's instructor-led, online Introduction to Adobe FrameMaker class. Hope to "see" you there.

***

About the author: Barbara Binder is the president and founder of Rocky Mountain Training. Barbara has been a trainer for nearly two decades and has been recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide.

Comments

[Anamika Sharma]

FrameMaker by default, places the Table of Contents in a different file within the directory where the FrameMaker document is stored. I have a FrameMaker document and I want my Table of Contents to be available on the first page of my document. That is, I have a document named, Test.fm and I want to place the TOC at the beginning of my document as the way we do it in MS Word.

Thanks

[Barb Binder]

The best way to do that is to create the TOC as a stand-alone document as you have been doing, and then import the TOC into the first page of your document as a text inset, in a separate flow.

~Barb