Weird TOC Behaviour

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After moving a 2003 doc to 2007 I’ve encountered a strange behavoiur in the table of contents. For example when the TOC displays a Heading 3 entry It displays something like the following even though the Headin 3 style (and the actual Heading 3 entry in the doc) is in all caps. The TOC looks like this:

HEADING 3 TABLE of Contents

Or in some cases it is all in Lower case. I tried deleting the TOC and inserting a new one using one of the 2007 default formats, but have the same results.I just cannot understand why 2007 arbitrarily changes the format.

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Do you want to post a sample of the problem? Scrub as needed for confidential info.

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After moving a 2003 doc to 2007 I’ve encountered a strange behavoiur in the table of contents. For example when the TOC displays a Heading 3 entry It displays something like the following even though the Headin 3 style (and the actual Heading 3 entry in the doc) is in all caps. The TOC looks like this:

HEADING 3 TABLE of Contents

Or in some cases it is all in Lower case. I tried deleting the TOC and inserting a new one using one of the 2007 default formats, but have the same results.I just cannot understand why 2007 arbitrarily changes the format.

In the case of “TABLE of Contents”, that is probably how it was typed in the text. Because caps has been set in the style, it appears as TABLE OF CONTENTS. The TOC carries over direct formatting and character style setting but not paragraph style settings. If you want heading 3 to appear in caps and lowercase in the TOC, change TABLE to Table in the text. –You can change the style temporarily to normal so you can see that you are changing the case the way I want it. — If you want heading 3 in the TOC top be all caps, modify the TOC3 style. You have more flexibility to change case without retyping and to display headings differently in text, TOCs, and stylerefs if you always type headings in caps and lowercase.

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After some investigation I’ve discovered that the TOC picks up heading text as it was typed — NOT as it is displayed by the Heading Style. Thus, if text is entered in lower case and then the Heading style is imposed (in this case the heading is set to all caps) it seems that the style simply controls how the text is displayed in the document — it does not change what was typed. The TOC picks up what was typed and not what the style displays. I can live with that. What I can’t seem to find in 2007 is where the format of the various TOC levels is specified. As I recall in 2003 you could open up a list of TOC styles (i.e. TOC1 TOC2, TOC3, etc.) and change the properties of the style to be applied to that level of the TOC. I can’t find that anywhere in 2007. It seems that 2007 has introduced some new concepts called Building Blocks which I don’t understand — I guess I’de better read up on it as it is something totally new to me.

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I believe your description of the TOC picking up the heading text as typed, not as displayed, is correct. This can actually be helpful in some scenarios – such as when you have your Heading style set to All Caps, but you want the TOC to show the heading in title case. Typing the headings in title case in the document will result in them showing as All Caps in the document, but as title case in the TOC.

To modify the TOC styles in Word 2007, you can do the following: References tab, click on the Table of Contents button. Near the bottom of the dropdown gallery, click on “Insert Table of Contents…” – this will display the familiar Table of Contents dialog. From there, click on the Modify button to modify the TOC styles.

Gary

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Chuck,

In addition to the method Gary points out, you should be able to see the TOC styles in the Styles Pane — if you configure the pane to show “All Styles.” With the Styles Pane displayed, click “Options…” (a link at the lower right-hand corner), then change the “Select styles to show” drop-down to “All Styles.” If you like, you can click the “Select how list is sorted” drop-down and change the order in which styles are displayed in the pane. (My own preference is “Alphabetical.”) Before you close the dialog, click “New documents based on this template” to ensure that your preferences will take effect in all new documents, then click “OK.”

After reconfiguring the options, you should be able to scroll down and see — and easily modify — the TOC styles.

Jan

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Forgot to add that Building Blocks, also known as Quick Parts, are something else altogether — not really relevant to your original questions (as far as I can tell). Essentially they’re the newer incarnation of AutoText. That is, they’re boilerplate text (sometimes combined with codes and/or graphics) that you can insert with just a few keystrokes.

Jan

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