"Ghost" TOC Topics

[Telecaster52]

Hello!

After architecting a project TOC and creating an Output Target, there are a few "Ghost" entries that are haunting the project TOC after I build the project to a PDF output. I know that there's a rational, reasonable explanation for this (namely, User Error), but what causes this, and how can I purge these entries from the TOC? I have shared a screenshot.

Thank you, venerable MadCap Community.

[Curlyshell]

I'm not sure which are the "ghost" entries, or whether those entries are actual topics in your project, or if perhaps they are headings within a topic.

If they are actual topics, is it possible you're being affected by the setting in your PDF target > Advanced tab > "Inject headings for unlinked books in TOC"? You might want to uncheck that box. (You may have to scroll down to see it, not just here but also in the target.)

temp.png

Is your project imported from another source, such as Word? You might have a disconnect between the header levels in your Word TOC and the header level you set to create new topics in the import.

[Telecaster52]

I'm not sure which are the "ghost" entries, or whether those entries are actual topics in your project, or if perhaps they are headings within a topic.

If they are actual topics, is it possible you're being affected by the setting in your PDF target > Advanced tab > "Inject headings for unlinked books in TOC"? You might want to uncheck that box. (You may have to scroll down to see it, not just here but also in the target.)

temp.png

Is your project imported from another source, such as Word? You might have a disconnect between the header levels in your Word TOC and the header level you set to create new topics in the import.

Ah. I think you're right. I found an oddball HTML line that was causing this: an inheritance from Word, no doubt. Deleted, and it now works. Thanks!

EDIT...OK, I got two of three to work. I'll see if there's any funky HTML that's causing the issue. It's not immediately apparent, unfortunately.

[Curlyshell]

Have you examined the actual TOC in Project Organizer?

[Telecaster52]

I have analyzed the TOC, but only to the extent of reviewing the properties of what are potentially the topics preceding and following the "ghost." The "ghost" should not be there. All other topics should. Nothing appears to be out of the ordinary. I'll continue to research.

EDIT (again). AHA. Word insidiously inserted extra header HTML at the end of the preceding topic. Deleted and fixed.

Thank you!

[Curlyshell]

Great job!!

One of the necessary steps before importing is to find random text stylized as headers. Next time...in Word, you can ctrl-F to open the sidebar and choose "Headers," then eyeball the entire hierarchy for headers that are blank or look like part of the text.

Things that are benign in Word will kill you on import. For example, locally formatted text. I have to change all that to Word styles, such as changing all bold text to a style called "bold."

[ChoccieMuffin]

Another thing that can cause problems is having "empty" paragraphs in your document. It's possible that your source Word doc had:

Heading 1[Return]
[Return]
Body text [Return]

If that second line was also formatted as Heading 1 in Word, then that would explain the empty entries in your TOC. So the lesson to learn is to tidy up your imported doc as much as you can before you import, and avoid "empty" paragraphs as much as you can - it's so common to stick an empty paragraph in to give space between paragraphs in Word docs when in fact the spacing should be done with the styles. But that's what happens in Word. Good luck.