TOC problem in pages

I found this after searching for TOC in Pages Help.

There are several other topics that could be helpful as well.

To create a table of contents:

Click Inspector in the toolbar, click the Document Inspector button, and then click TOC.
Select the checkboxes next to the paragraph styles whose text you want to appear in the table of contents. For example, if you want all the first-level headings and subheadings to appear in the table of contents, select the paragraph style that you used for first-level headings and subheadings.
If the styles you select are not used anywhere in the document, you will see a message that your table of contents is empty when you create the table of contents. If you select styles that are used very frequently in the document, your table of contents might be longer than you want.

In the #’s column, select the checkboxes of those styles whose entries you want to include a page number.
Place the insertion point at the beginning of the line where you want the table of contents to appear, and then choose Insert > Table of Contents.

I've noticed when opening Word docs, while the style info came across ok the TOC did not. So you shouldn't have to redefine the styles, just redefine what styles make up the TOC.

I have a problem with TOC a little different from superegg88. In the Inspector TOC pane I see NO paragraph styles, not even greyed out ones, so I can't define any style to make a TOC. Is this a bug in Leopard or am I doing something wrong?

After playing around with the templates supplied with Pages, I found that some of them show the document styles in the Inspector TOC pane and some don't. It seems that only documents created from a "Word Processing" template allow TOC's. Those created from a "Page Layout" template don't. Why??

Colin,

This isn't meant to agree or disagree with the way Apple does things, only to clarify them: there are features of Pages (TOC, spell check, others) that simply will not see text that's on anything other than a text layer. That lets out any text that's in a Page Layout document, because there is no text layer. Only documents begun in a Word Processing layout have a text layer. In fact, if you have text in a text box in a WP doc, Pages TOC feature won't find that either.

-Dennis

Dennis, thanks for clarifying this. I had pretty well figured it out. Apple's help file for Pages is very vague about this difference and says nothing about a "text layer" existing ONLY in a Word Processing document. I really don't understand why they created two classes of documents. What is the problem with having a text layer in all documents? All one has to do is make any object float in a Word Processing document and you have the same thing as a Page Layout document.

Colin,

One of the first comments I made in this discussion group an hour after purchasing iWork '08 was my confusion about the difference between the two modes. After using it for months now, I've come to the conclusion that it's a response to the insanely huge amount of tech support calls they must have gotten from people wanting to know why they couldn't drag and move objects in Pages 2. Apple must have gotten tired of explaining to people the difference between Fixed On Page (now called Floating) and Moves With Text (now called Inline). My guess is that it was easier for Apple to add a Page Layout mode in which all objects are defined as Floating, since Inline objects can only appear on a text layer. Apple simply chose to remove the text layer, thus eliminating Inline objects that can't be dragged, thus eliminating 90 percent of their tech-support calls. Truthfully, I preferred the old way, but then I'm on this discussion group every day and have the opportunity to learn little proactive tricks like clicking in the gray margin area to make the cursor disappear, then inserting an object. Or REactive tricks like selecting the object, then going to the Wrap inspector to change it from Inline to Floating. These are things that aren't very intuitive to new users, and I can understand their confusion. Apparently, Apple can, too.

-Dennis