Grab More than 256 Characters in a TOC
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Ron wrote:
I am developing an InDesign template for [this book series] so that we can improve on its process. The TOC for this series is complex but I have been able to successfully make it fully automated except for one issue: One of the tags being brought into the TOC is the chapter intro, which is a 1-paragraph block of text. The full paragraph is also used in the TOC to give readers a decent description of the chapter in addition to the contents. There seems to be a 255 character maximum that the auto-generated TOC will actually bring in per tagged paragraph. I need it to pull in the whole paragraph regardless of character length. Do you know of any way to change the maximum number of characters allowed?
Ron, while I know of no way to change the number of characters the Table of Contents feature will capture, I’m sure someone could write a script to grab all those paragraphs for you. But until someone does, here’s an alternate solution you might consider: Make the first paragraph of the chapter an anchored text frame in its own paragraph.
With a combination of paragraph styles, object styles, and the Fit Frame to Content feature, you should be able to place the first paragraph in an anchored text frame pretty quickly. Then apply the “First Para” paragraph style to the paragraph that contains the anchored object — not the text inside that anchored frame! Then, when you choose Layout > Table of Contents, InDesign will capture the one character on that paragraph: The anchored text frame that just happens to contain the entire paragraph.
This works because InDesign’s Table of Contents feature captures the first 255 characters of the paragraph, even if the characters are anchored objects. I’ve heard from some folks who wish they could strip out anchored objects from TOC entries, but in this case it would work to your advantage.
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