Did you try editing the Chapter Numbering in the numbering and section options? I've never used the book feature in InDesign, so I'm not sure how it works. There is also a "book page numbering options" in the books panel.

António, not sure I understand your problem.

I'm not following your example: A 1.1, AA 1.2, etc.

I've worked with the Book feature, but not recently in CS3, which has a few new settings.

Have you made sure that the numbering options for your individual chapters is set to Automatic Page Numbering, so that the numbers don't begin anew in each section?

-- Kent.

OK. I will try to explain better my situatin.

- We have 25 documents marked on the numbering options as different sections. Sections go like this: 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.
- We also use the "include section prefix" option and set it up to: 1., 2., 3., 4., etc.
- We use "Start page numbering at: 1" instead of automatic page numbering because we need it to start anew, we want the pages to be numbered like this: SectionPrefix.PageNumberOfTheSection

So, our catalog chapters go like this: 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 2.1, 2.2, 3.1, 4.1, 4.2, etc.

Hope that's clear enough for you to understand how the numbering is structured.

Onto the problem now. The table of contents.
Ideally we would create a book, include all the 25 documents and add a new document for the TOC itself, then we would go create the TOC through the method we all know and select the option "Include book document: X.indb". This indeed creates a TOC and does indeed grab all the titles from all the 25 documents in the book. Problem is, it sorts them by ascending page number, while we need it in entry alphabetical order.
Ok then, select the "Sort entry in alphabetic order" option in the TOC menu you would say. Well we did, and this is what's happening:

Acessório 1.1
Adaptadores com agulha 1.2
Adaptadores sem agulha 1.2
Adesivo em não tecido 1.2
Adesivo em não tecido 1.2
Adesivos 1.3
Água bidestilada 1.3
Agulhas 1.3
Agulhas de mesoterapia 1.4
Álcool etílico sanitário 1.4
Algodão em corda 1.4
Algodão hidrófilo 1.5
Algodão hidrófilo 1.5
Aplicadores de algodão 1.5
Aventais plásticos 1.6
Bastões de limpeza 1.6
Bata para tratamentos 1.6
Batas 1.7
Batas 1.7
Bolas e discos de algodão 1.7
Caixa dispensadora 1.8
Calça de pressoterapia 1.8
Calção em não tecido 1.8

Acessório is not on page 1.1 (nor are all the other products listed in the correct page)! It's just the alphabetical order kicking in with the ascending page number sorting at the same time, creating a mess for which I have no explanation. As you can probably guess this is no good. It just connects the products starting with A with the first pages, B with the next ones and so on.

Basically we'd like to know how to remove the page numbering sorting from TOC.

I'd be a very happy man if someone could explain what's happening here, though it might be a bug.

Thank you very much for reading!

António

Let me see if I understand -- You have 25 chapters. Each chapter might include multiple sections. Each of these sections, within each chapter, will begin numbering anew. So, you might have page 2.4 (Section 2, page 4) in Chapter 1, but also in Chapter 5?

If that's correct, then InDesign might be choking on all the duplicated numbers (though I don't see why it should). Not sure why it's not keeping the associated page numbers with the entries.

Normally a Table of Contents is not organized alphabetically, but rather in content/pagination order. Sounds more like you are creating an Index (even if you are putting it at the beginning of the catalog). Have you considered using the Index feature to generate your list instead? It's a lot more work to put in the markers, but it's probably more robust and might be better at handling your unique situation.

Of course, at that point, it might just be easier to make up the list manually, the good ol' fashioned way. Unless you're planning on doing a lot of switching things around and want to have the TOC update automatically.

Another solution might be to just generate the TOC in typical pagination order (which if I understood you correctly, InDD did just fine). Then copy the text into a word processing document, sort your list alphabetically, and reimport into your design file. If formatting is an issue, you might be able to export the text as tagged text and work around that in your sorting.

-- K.

António -- Try something: Check in the Book Palette flyout menu > Document Numbering Options and see if Document Chapter Numbering is set to "Continue from Previous Document in the Book".

If not, see if checking this makes a difference in how the TOC feature treats your documents.

You will need to set this separately for each chapter file in the Book palette. Then you may also need to select Book Palette > Update Numbering > Update Chapter & Paragraph Numbers.

I'm not sure if this will make a difference, but it's something that might be worth trying. (You might want to back up your files: working with the Book palette and updating/synchronizing can sometimes have undesired effects and you'll want to be able to go back if this doesn't work and instead screws something up.)

HTH

-- K.

kentlew wrote:

You have 25 chapters. Each chapter might include multiple sections. Each of these sections, within each chapter, will begin numbering anew. So, you might have page 2.4 (Section 2, page 4) in Chapter 1, but also in Chapter 5?

No. Each chapter has one section. Only one. We used Sections instead of Chapters because we needed to use the Section prefix for the page numbering. But think of it as chapters.

Doing it manually is out of question I'm afraid, way too much time needed, time we don't have I'm afraid.

Another solution might be to just generate the TOC in typical pagination order (which if I understood you correctly, InDD did just fine). Then copy the text into a word processing document, sort your list alphabetically, and reimport into your design file. If formatting is an issue, you might be able to export the text as tagged text and work around that in your sorting.

This will do the job. Thanks for the tip, it just flew over my head!

Seems rather stupid though. Paying for a supposedly great and complex piece of pagination software just to have to resort to another software to do the tasks the original software is supposed to do so well. But I guess that's going off topic here, I'll just have to turn to Adobe on this matter.

Once again, thanks for the tip. If you have any other suggestion after the above explanation please let me know. ;)

Oh, okay, so each "chapter" file is really a Section, with section prefix?

So, you might have

Acessório 3.24
Adaptadores com agulha 2.12
Adaptadores sem agulha 3.12
Adesivo em não tecido 1.8

like that?

I've been testing and I can re-create your problem. Looks like it has nothing to do with the Section prefix and numbering. The problem seems to be the Alphabetical sorting. Even with typical pagination, the TOC feature sorts entries, but does not treat page numbers as uniquely attached to entries and leaves them in ascending order.

I would contact Adobe and submit this as a bug report.

Maybe if Eric Menninga visits this thread, he might have some insight.

Good luck.

-- Kent.

I just read this and don't have any additional insights, except that Kent Lew is very helpful! I will forward this to the engineer who know more about sorting and TOC issues.

After some weeks with ADOBE tech support, they come up with this awnser. I posted just in case someone had the same problem:

----------------------------------
There are a number of bugs regarding prefixes and TOCs in CS3 marked as
fixed I tested and could replicate without too many problems.

Same steps in CS4 work fine!

Our advise is to download CS4 trial and test this to see if this work
successfully.

So unfortunately there are no fix for this in CS3, but the issue was
fixed in CS4. So only solution would be to upgrade to this version.

We are sorry for any inconvenience!

--------------------------------

António Fonseca