Affinity Publisher provides the ability to easily insert and manage a table of contents (TOC) for your document.
A table of contents searches the document for text in specified text styles (typically headings) and reproduces that text in a list, normally annotated with page numbers. The document can have as many TOCs as required, but typically a single TOC at the start of your publication is used.
Planning your TOC position
If you create a document with sufficient pages containing TOC-qualifying headings, you will need to plan out the number of TOC pages to accommodate the automatically generated TOC:
If the number of headings necessitates a two-page spread, you will need to make room for this at the start of the publication.
If the number of TOC entries may overflow the frame, link the text frames between page 1 and 2 of your TOC, otherwise manually flow the overflowing text to the second page's frame.
Using multiple TOCs
When a TOC has been inserted for the document, secondary, section-specific TOCs can be created (for example, TOCs for each chapter of a book). You can generate and present a secondary TOC within a selected section, including all subsequent qualifying headings, or just those within the section.
Text styles
TOC text styles only show in the Text Styles panel when a text frame containing a generated TOC is selected. By default, new TOCs should have their own styles.
Leader tabs can be added as tab stops as part of the style used by the table of contents. The default TOC style can be found in the Text Styles panel. Clicking on the style and selecting Edit ... will display the Edit Text Style dialog, from which you can adjust the tab stops in the Tab Stops section. By default, there will be a single tab stop at position 0 (measured from the right edge). The third menu along sets the leader, and by default there is none. Click on the menu and select Tab stop leader character or click the "..." at the end of the row to display a pop-up panel that allows you to pick which character is used for the leader.
To generate a table of contents
From the Text menu, select Table of Contents and then Insert Table of Contents to insert a table of contents at the caret.
The Table of Contents panel (usually found in the View menu under Studio, followed by Table of Contents) will open automatically, allowing you to adjust the format of your TOC.
Alternatively, a table of contents can be inserted directly from the Table of Contents panel. To do this, open the Table of Contents panel, select a table of contents from the TOC: pop-up menu and adjust additional panel settings accordingly, then click Insert from the top of the panel.
To update your table of contents manually
With a table of contents selected, from the Table of Contents panel, click Update. Click Update All Tables of Contents to update every table of contents in your document.
To add leader lines between items and page numbers:
Select a text frame that contains a table of contents.
On the Table of Contents panel (View>Studio>Table of Contents), verify the name of the selected TOC.
On the Text Styles panel, double-click the Entry style that matches the TOC's name. For example, TOC 1: Entry.
Select Tab Stops on the left of the Edit Text Style dialog.
To the right, click the predefined tab stop's ‘…’ button.
Next to Leader, select the Tab stop leader character, Tab stop leader underline, or Tab stop leader strikeout setting.
(Optional) If you chose the leader character setting, type the glyph to repeat along the leader line in the Character field.
To generate a table of contents
To update your table of contents manually