Modifying an Outline template.

Tyvm, I'll take a look.

I had a feeling that I was being a bit too hopeful that Pages could magically create a personalised dictionary for me lol. The Outlines template is perfect visually, but as the glossary grows it's taking too much time and brain power to start cutting and pasting into an alphabetised list manually.

I shall check out WordService and see what it can do.

If anyone else has any further tips on Pages and what I'm hoping to finally create that would still be very helpful too!

Yeah it's already around 6 pages and that's barely scratching the surface of what it will eventually contain.

Well, I installed WordService as it states, I see all the options in the services menu but only when I highlight the text, but no matter what option from the Service menu I choose, nothing happens at all.

It feels a little like a manual approach may be my only option which is a shame, it just causes so much extra work when I'm already deep into studying.

Yup does nothing at all, I was worried initially that it was just going to scramble everything so tried copying just three headings without their definitions into a blank document, selected them and chose Sort Lines Ascending and they remained completely unchanged.

This thing is causing many headaches now, I tried to just manually work it out by creating a new blank document with initially 26 pages, each page containing a corresponding letter of the alphabet with the Title paragraph style and then cut and paste the current entries into the corresponding letters. I then used Inspector>Toc to select JUST Title paragraph styles and inserted a Table of Contents but it goes crazy, it inserts the TOC throughout the entire text and changes ALL the paragraph styles on all of the text in the document!

Surely this in theory is quite simple!? I've had nothing but trouble with setting up TOC's, many times it will tell me that paragraph style is not used in the document even though it is, or will put the TOC halfway through the document and split it over 5 pages AND be out of order. Only on one occasion have I set up a TOC without a problem first time, which says to me I can't possibly be doing it WRONG, if that time it was RIGHT!

This document is an integral part of my studies and for the first time in a long while.... I am wishing I had a PC :|

Which is exactly how I do use styles, as I'd already stated.

Right now the dummy document I am using is set out identically to the main document I am trying to change, and is as follows as far as paragraph styles go:

TITLE

Caption

Body

Caption

Body

Caption

Body

Whenever the TITLE style text is used is at the start of a page so that ideally, a TOC can be set up reading for instance as follows:

TITLE 2

TITLE 11

TITLE 13

TITLE 21

Or whatever other random page numbers that TITLE text may be on. We'll call the above TOC ENTRY.

What I however end up with when I insert a TOC and use Inspector to choose the Title paragraph style text to show is the following:

On page 1:

TITLE

Caption

Body TOC ENTRY

Heading 1

TOC ENTRY Body Caption Heading 1

Heading 1

Caption TOC ENTRY Body (but appearing in Caption style)

This, in a slightly different variation of styles and location of the TOC ENTRY is repeated on several random pages and by creating the TOC it has also added 17 blank pages at random intervals throughout the document as well. At times it has split the Body content into several pages with large spaces in between, moved body text that was underneath one Caption to underneath a different Caption, or placed 3 words of some random Body content on a page on it's own nowhere near where it started.

As far as WordService goes, no I haven't restarted the computer, I logged in and out as the installation instructions stated but I will try a restart.

Although I am as I said 'fairly new to Pages '09' I do want to state that the basics do not confuse me to the point of somehow using Styles and the TOC function so incorrectly that it reformats my entire document by following the very simple instructions given by Apple, especially when in all the documents I have created with the exact same process only the first instance created a TOC in the right place, showing the right information and leaving the rest of the document unharmed. Subsequent attempts have resulted in changing ALL TEXT to a paragraph style not previously used, such as Footnote style, placing the TOC backwards split over 15 pages, deleting all Body text from the document completely leaving only headings and wiping the entire the document and replacing 29 pages of work with a little square stating that the TOC couldn't be created as the style didn't appear anywhere in the document...well, no, not anymore it doesn't.

Because of my experiences with TOC creation I have mainly left it alone and created a TOC manually, which is a lot of extra work but there you go, in this case though, this document will already take a lot of time to create so for once I'd like to be able to just make something slightly easier.

This thread however is straying very far away from my original question, which was not my intention, it has just happened as this becomes more and more complicated by the minute. Honestly, if presentation wasn't a part of the documents creation I'd probably just use a very, very large stack of handwritten notecards over this torture!