TOC page numbering appears grey in PDF output

[andy_smith]

I’m trying to understand how Flare renders the output of the table of contents in a PDF.

My problem is that on every manual in my project the PDF renders the list of headings in normal black text but the page numbers are rendering in pale grey.

I don’t really understand how TOCs work and I get confused by the terminology so apologies if I’ve mixed anything up.

I can see that when I click on the TOC.htm file (as listed in the TOC editor) it is a simple HTML file that contains no content other than to call up a snippet. The snippet itself just seems to define the heading font size and colour displayed at the top of the page in the PDF.

From this I conclude that the work of defining the layout and colour, as rendered in the PDF table of contents, is done in the documentname.fltoc file. However, when I view this in a text editor, I can’t see anything other than links to specialist MadCap files. There is nothing that defines how the table of contents is aligned, indented or coloured.

Can anyone help?

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Background
I’ve been using Flare for a couple of years and I’m becoming more confident. However, I still struggle with tables of contents, TOCs, proxies and the specific definitions of the terms within Flare. Beyond that the way TOCs are set up and defined still escapes me. All my manuals are either edits of existing manuals or copies of previous manuals. I’ve never had to set up a new manual with a brand new table of contents. I’ve tried looking in the online help but I can’t find a general overview of TOCs or anything that defines them.

[NorthEast]

From this I conclude that the work of defining the layout and colour, as rendered in the PDF table of contents, is done in the documentname.fltoc file.

The *.fltoc files aren't used to set visual appearance or styling - they only contain the information that you can set in the TOC editor itself, such as the TOC entries themselves, page layouts breaks, numbering formats, etc.

The visual appearance of the PDF contents is defined in your stylesheet.
I'd strongly recommend reading Flare's help to understand what you can do: https://help.madcapsoftware.com/flare2023/Content/Flare/TOCs/Additional-Steps-Activities-Print/Editing-Look-Print-TOC2.htm

As mentioned in the help, page numbers will usually inherit the style of the TOC item (set by p.TOC1, p.TOC2, etc.), but you may have styled the page number using MadCap|xref.TOCPageNumber.