TOC Title picking up character style

[jekjo]

The title of the TOC I've got set up in my document is picking up the character style applied to the first entry in the TOC. If I remove the character style from the section heading being pulled into the TOC as the first entry, the TOC title goes back to its proper dark gray color, but as soon as I reapply the character color to the section heading being pulled into the TOC as the first entry and update my TOC, the title changes color to blue. Is there a way to fix this?

Or maybe there is a different way to accomplish what I'm going for. Each section of my document is color coded, and I'm trying to pull that color coding into my TOC. Here is how I'm currently accomplishing that:
Each section heading being pulled into the TOC is white text on a colored background. I've made the section heading paragraph style have a character color of gray but at 0%, so it appears white. Then I've applied a character color on top of the fake white to change the text to match the color coding of the section. It still looks white because of the 0% color in the paragraph style. This is all good. When the TOC is generated, the TOC entry style is at 100% of a color, so each section entry appears in the color of the section it comes from due to the character style applied to each section heading. Still all good. But, as I stated above, the TOC title itself (in this case, the word Contents) is taking on that character color of the first entry.

I suppose the easiest fix would be to just remove the TOC title from the TOC itself and have it as separate text, but I'm curious about this functionality. Why is the TOC title taking on the character style of the first entry of the TOC? Is there a way to stop it? Or maybe there's a better way to color code my TOC?

Thanks in advance for any input.

[Eric Dumas]

Hi,

Can you confirm the version of your OS and INDesign. As well, can you add screenshots of your Paragraph style panel, TOC setup window and maybe your document.

The TOC Title has its own Paragraph Style, so it should not be affected by other formatting properties.

[jekjo]

Hi Eric,

I don't know if this is right, but the Windows seems to be Windows Server 2008 R2. I'm using Adobe CC 2017.

I unfortunately can't share the document due to privacy issues. Although, if this post doesn't help, maybe I'll create a blank document I can upload.

This is the TOC setup window:

This is the TOC when the first section in the document does not have the blue character style applied. TOC title is gray and the TOC entry is black.

When I add the blue character style to the heading for section 1 and update my TOC, the TOC title goes blue along with the first entry:

I've tried changing the style the TOC title is linked to as well as creating a new style altogether, and it behaves this way no matter what I do.

Thanks again for any insight you can offer.

[Eric Dumas]

Your TOC is controlled by a style Contents Header (Hea...

you should use its own style TOC. It should be created automatically. Check in your paragraph styles panel.

[Barb Binder]

Thanks again for any insight you can offer.

My two cents...

If you assign character style to the first word and then click at the beginning of the line, your cursor is inside the character style:

If you then press Enter and tap the up arrow and start typing, you are still inside the character style. That's basically what I believe to be happening in the TOC. The title is being added to the line directly above the first heading and it's carrying along the character style.

I think the simplest answer may just be to select the title, and click on [None] when you have finished all the edits.

[Obi-wan Kenobi · Accepted solution]

Funny!

A simple trick to avoid once for all this problem: insert a [None] non-joiner at the beginning of the first section title in the doc.

(^/)

[Barb Binder]

Clever, O-B W!

Did you give it a try,jnonamej ? Please let us know if that works for you.

It's under Type > Insert Character > Other. Add it to the beginning of the first head and be sure not to assign the character style to that invisible character. Use the arrow keys to select the text.

~Barb

[lucolella-yantosca]

Hi - somehow the None (non-joiner) trick did not work for me. But I appreciate knowing this trick, it might work for me in the future.

[jekjo]

Thank you, Eric, Barb, and Obi-wan for your responses. I've been trying to get back here to comment, but the forums haven't been working for me. I've been getting a "too many redirects" message instead of any forum page; fortunately, I finally found the solution to that and was able to access the forums today. Yay.

Anyway, Barb, I have no doubt you're right that it's getting the title inside the character style for the top entry, but it's really weird that it does that.

Obi-wan, your clever little fix takes care of it. Thanks for that!

I hope you all have great days.

[keithconover]

The proposed solution didn't work for me. What did work was using character styles, in the Table of Contents panel, for both the space between the heading and for the number, and making sure that they specified the color black. I had already been using character styles for both; for the space, my character style specified a line of dots, and for my number, it specified a "regular" style in terms of point size (very helpful to keep the entries in the Table of Contents looking similar). I just had to add the color to these two styles.

[schroef]

I tried this but doesnt work for me, it still receives the character style and thus the color. I made sure the non-joiner is free of any style