Table of contents editing (master.fltoc)

[sdcinvan]

After spending all morning repositioning, adding, and deleting content in the TOC, the most 'painful' part of this editing was adding or needing to change the properties a chapter.

It would be so much easier if we could set up page/chapter profiles, rather than having to manually edit each properties section (general, printed output, auto-numbers, conditional text, auto-generate, and advanced). I mean, perhaps 80% of all my chapters share the same properties but needing to manually set this up for each needlessly wastes time.

The Page Layout (under master pages) only stores a fraction of the TOC chapter presets. I know it is possible to edit the file, master.fltoc but it would still make it easier and faster if one could assign profiles.

OR did I skipped a chapter? Is this already possible?

[Nita Beck]

Have you tried editing with the TOC Editor in grid view instead of tree view? I believe that you can then select multiple TOC entries at the same time and can see (and modify) various attributes within the grid columns. But I'm going on memory. I don't have access to Flare at the moment.

[rob hollinger]

It's not obvious, but you can select multiple TOC entries from the Tree view and assign properties to them.
The trick is to use the CTRL key and not the SHIFT key.
Shift selects all topics inside books also.

Open the Tree view of the TOC.
Click on the first chapter break you want.
Holding down the CTRL key, click on the rest of the Chapter breaks that will all be the same.
Press F4 to open the properties dialog and set the desired properties.
Press OK.

Switch over to the Grid View to verify only those selected entries were changed.

[sdcinvan]

Have you tried editing with the TOC Editor in grid view instead of tree view? I believe that you can then select multiple TOC entries at the same time and can see (and modify) various attributes within the grid columns. But I'm going on memory. I don't have access to Flare at the moment.

Grid view? Thanks for the tip. You can definitely select multiple TOC entries, so I am guessing that will work. Still, I believe profiles (or the ability to duplicate properties from one chapter to another) would streamline this process.

But, this is not in vain, the grid view is nice and allows me to quickly see and compare properties across multiple chapters. Thank you Nita and Rob!

[rob hollinger]

For the record, I did enter a feature request for creating and using TOC Profiles while editing the TOC.
Set the properties you want in a profile and apply it to as many TOC items as needed.

[sdcinvan]

For the record, I did enter a feature request for creating and using TOC Profiles while editing the TOC.
Set the properties you want in a profile and apply it to as many TOC items as needed.

Awesome Rob! Thank you.