Can't generate internal TOC in InDesign Epub -- no matter what I try

[casinclaire]

I am a print designer whose publisher client has asked me to branch out and explore creating epubs. I've crash-coursed myself this last week and a half with Lynda.com courses, YouTube videos, and all kinds of blogs and Adobe instructions. I have actually had pretty good results with the book I used to practice on, to the point where it is nearly ready for Amazon.  The only problem is, I CANNOT GET AN INTERNAL TOC TO GENERATE.  I have exported sooooooo many times, I've lost count.  I've also tried "Make text anchor in source paragraph" -- both on and off -- numerous times. I have no idea if THAT is working or not because the internal TOC NEVER APPEARS. The Nav TOC shows up fine.  I'm previewing this export in Adobe Digital Editions (which has not impressed me at all), in Readium (a Chrome extension which actually reflects my embedded fonts), in Kindle Previewer, and on my own Kindle.  The internal TOC is showing up on none of them which just reinforces for me the fact that it is not generating.

My apologies if I've missed another post or a solution somewhere to this problem, but I've searched for three days one way and another and have found nothing except other complaints, going back as far as InDesign 2014.

One more thing.  So far, every post I HAVE found about the TOC functions -- even on the Adobe site itself -- seems to discuss ONLY the TOCs that are being generated from InDesign books (.indb)!  There is hardly any (maybe no) mention of stand-alone manuscripts (ones not broken down and saved in an InDesign .indb file).  The manuscript I'm working with is all in one single InD file, not in separate chapters (I did try setting it up in an .indb and for reasons I won't go into, it didn't work well with this manuscript).  So what little I AM finding about the TOC situation is barely even applicable to what I'm doing!

Does anyone out there have any insight into this problem?  I would be so grateful for any assistance!

C. Sinclaire

[casinclaire]

P.S. I forgot to say I'm using CC 2018.

[casinclaire]

Sorry, I remembered something else I should explain.  I DO have an internal TOC in the InDesign file.  I set it up in its own frames, separate from the flow of the book itself, so that it could safely regenerate if changes were made.  But when I open the exported file, those pages that contained the TOC frames (there are three) are not even accounted for. Not even blank pages show up.  The TOC is just plain skipped over, as if I'd never set it up at all.  The TOC is not getting picked up during the export process, which leaves me with no interal TOC or links to my source paragraphs.

Okay, I hope I've remembered everything now!

[Barb Binder]

Does the TOC appear in the Articles panel? Is it marked for exporting?

[casinclaire]

Hi, Barb!

I'm not using the Articles panel for this manuscript.  It is a straight text book with just chapter heads and text.  Not even subheads, etc.  The "bits and pieces" are not in separate text frames, other than the TOC I've placed inside the document.  It starts right at the title on the title page and goes right to the last sentence in the About the Author blurb at the end.  I'm creating my page breaks with paragraph styles and choosing those tyles -- keeping all at Level 1 -- in the TOC creation panel.  (For various reasons, this manuscript did not lend itself to either an .indb or the Articles panel.)

I've watched videos and read instructions, ad infinitum, and am feeling like this is a bug in InD CC 2018 -- that is, if the TOC can be generated ONLY if one is using an .indb or the Articles panel, then they should say so (and fix it!), but such a restriction has not been mentioned in anything I've found as I've researched.

[Steve Werner]

Moving to InDesign EPUB forum

[Yves_Apel]

Hi,

Did you check if the separate TOC frame is not placed on the master page only or if you haven't it marked (by mistake) as "nonprinting" in the attributes panel.

InDesign creates by default an inline TOC besides the NAV TOC (when using the automatic TOC feature) and I also tested in CC 2018 and its working as expected (in a single file).

–Yves

[casinclaire]

Hi, Yves.

No, the TOC is not on any of the master pages, and it is not marked non-printing.  It is placed on three pages between two parts of the front matter, but not making use of a primary text frame (I removed the primary text frame from these pages).  I am truly mystified. I don't know what else I can do differently, and no one else has mentioned having this problem that I have heard of as yet.

C.

[edotmcauley]

I was running into this problem recently, too. I'm not sure if you found your solution, but what finally ended up working for me was going into the chapter title paragraph style, selecting "Export Tagging" from the menu, and assigning "h2" to the style. (EPUBs interpret "h1" as the title of the book, "h2" as chapter titles, and "h3" as sub-chapter headings.)

This worked for me. I hope it works for anyone else struggling with this issue!

[FeAle-7IZsBx]

Hi,

If you have a external TOC works great (TOC.xhtml), you can use Sigil to produce the internal TOC. From menu Tools > TOC > Create HTML TOC.

Sigil will create a single HTML file with all links from the TOC.xhtml

Very easy

Regards