A dot leader can be a handy aid to readers trying to read information across a page. For example, a table of contents often uses dot leaders, leading the reader from the chapter title on the left of the page to the respective page listed on the right side.
Right away, I see several problems:. Fonts are not consistent. There's a mix of Times New Roman (the font for the rest of the brief) and Arial. I'd probably prefer a bit more white space between the second-level entries. I don't like the way the right indentation on the second-level entries is behaving — too close to the page numbers.
To fix the Table of Contents, I basically replace it. Yes, there are (if you're already comfortable with Styles), but I prefer this method because it doesn't involve me searching all over the document for each Style and modifying it separately. To-may-to, to-mah-to.
First, we select the entire Table of Contents with the mouse and hit Delete. Now, we can re-define the Table of Contents the way we want. First, we go to the References tab and find the Table of Contents menu on the far left. Notice how the Print Preview window (circled in red) has changed from the first time we saw it. Also notice that, if we want more/fewer TOC levels, or we want to alter or delete the dot leader, those options are available under General (in the lower third of the dialog box). Once we have finished modifying the TOC Styles, we click OK to insert the new Table of Contents. So, for my friend Judy, who has asked me repeatedly to do a tutorial on how to modify the format of a Table of Contents.
My current issue is how do you have it BOLD in the heading of the brief but attorney says NO bold in the TOC. Also, the page #ing for a Federal Appellate Brief in 11th circuit requires some strange page numbering and I’m trying to get the first few pages to auto generate with a C-1 of 3, C-2 of 3, and C-3 of 3 on the bottom of the page in the footer (can make that happen) but when TOC generates, it only shows page 1, page 2 and page 3. And I was told there is something about turning on F1 and viewing the formatting and you have to edit in the Para Heading and not the actual brief content! Double ARGHHH!
As for how to have the heading that appears in the brief bolded without pulling the bold attribute into the TOC: The trick is to apply bolding within the heading style itself. That is, modify the heading style and apply the bold attribute in the style, rather than using direct formatting to apply bold to the heading text as you type it. As long as the corresponding TOC style (TOC 2 for a Heading 2 style, etc.) does not incorporate the bold attribute, the heading should appear in regular type (not bolded) in the generated TOC. I learned this trick from the venerable Word MVP Suzanne Barnhill (on a similar issue, see this somewhat dated but still relevant exchange: ).
Hope it helps. Jan Berinstein CompuSavvy Computer Training & Consulting Author, Formatting Legal Documents With Microsoft Word 2010 and Formatting Legal Documents With Microsoft Office Word 2007. Your method is identical to modifying the TOC x styles with the Modify Style dialog — although I grant that accessing it through the ToC dialog may seem more intuitive. However, there are two additional points I’d make: 1. In the Modify Style dialog, be sure to turn off the “Automatically update” checkbox.
For some obscure reason, the default is “on” — but with it turned on, any direct formatting change made by a user to an instance of that style will automatically change the style definition! So, if a user decided to make a given TOC 3 line italic, all TOC 3 lines will suddenly become italic. Worse, subsequent levels based on TOC 3 will change as well. Your instructions cause the TOC styles to be modified for the default template (Normal.dotx).
This will work, but it can create future problems if a different document based on Normal used different settings — and then you re-opened this one. It is better practice to attach a custom template so you can be sure the style definitions are retained and can be archived with the document(s) associated with them. This is particularly true in a multi-user environment, or if you want to maintain several quite distinctly different document layouts.
I’m currently using Microsoft 2013 and have terms and conditions at the end of my document which is formatted using subheadings (ie 1.0., 1.2 ect) problem is I don’t wish to include all this text within the TOC, however I would like the page noted. How can this be done as whenever I press update TOC the whole text is included making the contents page about three pages long! I wish to create a template for future documents so it would be good to learn how to avoid all of this text being included.
Many thanks for your help. You could use Eric’s suggestion above (I haven’t tried that, so I can’t attest to it), but the most common way to control the content of a Table of Contents entry (it sounds like you don’t want to pick up the entire heading) is to NOT use Styles to build your TOC.
Rather, mark the entries manually using ALT-SHIFT-O (that’s the letter “O”, not the number “0”). Then, when you start to insert your Table of Contents, go to the References tab, click Table of Contents Insert Table of Contents. You’ll need to click the Options button at the bottom of the dialog box, then uncheck “Styles” and check “Table entry fields” as the basis of your TOC. I have two issues when creating a table of contents. 1) I would like to sort the table alphabetically, PERMANENTLY.
I know how to sort it, but it sorts itself back according to page number whenever it’s updated. 2) When I sort it alphabetically, I end up with several identical lines (though with different page numbers) because a given header comes up in different sections. I would like to have a single line, but the page numbers on one line, in the form of a enumeration (eg. 18, 21, 44, 55). Any help would be appreciated. You can use a workaround to rectify this as long as you remember to redo it if you need to rebuild the ToC (vs just updating the numbers). Select just the portion of the generated ToC that needs the letter.
Use Crtl-H to bring up the Find & Replace dialog, and change a tab (^t) character to a tab plus the letter you want (for example, changing ^t to ^tA- would put “A-” in front of all the page numbers within the selected part of the ToC). Repeat for the sections you need. Word’s generated table of contents will retain edits through numbering updates, but edits will need to be redone if the table is rebuilt. Note that the method above assumes a single tab in the ToC lines; if ToC lines have 1 tab within them you may need to use a more specific F&R expression (with wildcards for example). Legal Office Guru uses a technology known as 'cookies' to provide a better experience as you browse this site.
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Last week in the of this back to basics series on tab leaders we discussed creating dotted tab leaders in the Tabs palette to separate columnar text. Now, let’s talk about formatting those leaders. Tab leaders–dots, underscores, hyphens, smiley faces, whatever–inserted via the Tabs Ruler are automatically the same font and color as the surrounding text. If you set a leadered tabstop amidst black 12/16 pt Electra LT Std Regular text, you’ll get a black 12/16 pt Electra LT Std Regular leader. And, if you change the character and paragraph attributes of the entire paragraph, the leader will change as well. Often times that’s exactly what you want. Often times, you’re satisfied with the chocolate covered coconut goodness of a Mounds bar.
But, sometimes you feel like a nut (see Figure 1). Sometimes you want to go all the way and get yourself an Almond Joy. It’s at those times you want the tab leader to look a little different–maybe a different shade, color, or even typeface. Formatting the leader is the topic of this installment of “Tab Leaders,” and it’s easy.
First, set your text, and, following the instructions in “,” create the tab leaders. Close the Tabs Ruler. As you can see with invisible characters shown (Type Show Invisible Characters), InDesign treats tabs inserted with the keyboard TAB key as characters. They’re invisible characters, obviously, but characters nonetheless, and they can be formatted like any other character–visible or invisible. Using the Type tool, select just the tab character, which should now be represented by a visible (and printing) series of dots. Now you can format the leaders like you’d format any character–using the Character, Swatches, Color, or Gradient panels.
Want a leader that is a lighter shade of its current swatch color? Open the Colors panel and drag the tint slider to the left. Pick a new swatch to change the leader color entirely. Adjust the Tracking field on the Character panel to loosen or tighten the spacing between periods in the leader. How about larger periods? No problem: up the Font Size or even adjust the vertical or horizontal scale.
Heck, if you don’t like the shape of the periods, you can change the Font Family and Style fields, too. Of course, any changes you make to the tab and leader count as overrides to your paragraph style. If you ever force reapply the paragraph style or use one of the other methods of clearing overrides, your carefully formatted tab leaders will revert to matching their surrounding text. They will, that is, unless you create a character style just for the leader.
With the leader still highlighted, open the Character Styles panel (Window Type & Tables Character Styles). Click the New button at the bottom of the panel, which will create a new style, “Character Style 1.” (New character styles are numbered sequentially, so yours might read “Character Style 2” or another number.). Double-click “Character Style 1” to open the Character Style Options dialog (see Figure 2). Change the name to something more representative of the style’s function, something like “List 01 – Tab Leader” or whatever works for you.
Click the OK button. Now, you’re done. By double-clicking the character style to access its options you also simultaneously assigned it to the highlighted tab character.
Now highlight the tabs in the list’s other lines and assign the same character style to them. Assigning character styles to the tabs can also be automated–you do it once, and thereafter InDesign will do it for you automatically. We’ll talk about that in part 4 of “Tab Leaders.” Next week in part 3 we’ll perform a very different task: inserting leaders in paragraph text to create write-in blanks such as you might find in a contract or form. For now, there’s one other important bit of information I’d like to impart: The location of the tabstop and the fact that it has a leader is also an override to the paragraph style. To ensure that you don’t lose those bits of data, highlight a bit of text in your line–don’t include the tab in your selection. Then, on the Paragraph Styles panel (Window Type & Tables Paragraph Styles), open the panel flyout menu in the top right corner and choose Redefine Style (see Figure 3).
That will add the location of the tabstop and its leader option to your paragraph style definition. Of course, if you hadn’t already created a paragraph style for the tab-separated list, create one using the same procedure as building a character style but on the Paragraph Styles panel. Burke is a design and publishing workflow expert bringing creative efficiency into studios, agencies, and publications around the world as principal of Workflow: Creative. I?m currently working on many (like 25) different bind-in subscription cards for magazines. I use tabs to set up the address fields that the consumer would fill in.
Our proofer noticed that the space between the word (ie: name/address/city/state/zip) and the leader line isn?t consistent. I thought I just had an extra space in there, but after turning on the hiddens, there aren?t any spaces! All of the text is the same size, same tracking, kerning, everything.
Any ideas how to make the space between the word and the leader line consistent? I?m going to have to fix all 25 cards and I?d love to have an easy solution. I?m also using Indesign CS2. Thanks for any suggestions!