Help needed with table of contents construction for ebook

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Help needed with table of contents construction for ebook

I am creating an ebook manuscript in Pages. I want to link the headings in the table of contents - instead of the page numbers - to the appropriate sections of my document. Is there any way to do that?

Also, how can I edit the table of contents? I don't mean change the style. I've already done that. I just want to add extra spacing and insert a page break. Every time I try to insert my cursor to make these changes, the headings become highlighted in blue. How can I avoid that?

Posted on Feb 1, 2013 7:00 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

PeterBreis0807

Level 8

41,164 points

Feb 1, 2013 7:30 AM in response to suzanne189

When you click on the TOC the TOC styles become visible in the Styles Drawer.

Clicking on each style in the Drawer selects the text associated with that style and you can edit their properties, then update the style.

As to linking the headings, don't know of anyway to do that in Pages, but I imagine you might be able to edit the epub hyperlinks by moving the enclosing brackets around the linked numbers to include the text instead.

Peter

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Answer 2

Feb 1, 2013 9:23 AM in response to suzanne189

Is your goal to have links on the chapter titles as an ease of use for the consumer of your ebook, or as a convenience to you that enables you to jump around the book with a single click?

The first part of the conjunction does not appear currently possible in Pages. The second part is possible.

Select a chapter title. Open the link inspector and choose the Bookmark tab. Add your chapter titles in order as bookmarks. No hyperlinks. Once done, you can use your mouse to select the bookmarked chapter title from the link inspector bookmark list that you want to instantly jump to in your Pages document. Simpler than using the TOC to do this.

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Answer 3

suzanne189 Author

Level 1

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Feb 1, 2013 9:30 AM in response to VikingOSX

Thanks for your reply. My goal is for readers to be able to click on the chapter headings and be linked to the appropriate sections. It's a requirement of ebook formatting to have an "active" table of contents, and page numbers are not used as readers can adjust the font size, which in turn affects the number of pages. I was able to do this previously in a Microsoft Word document, but it appears that you can only link from the page numbers in a TOC when using Pages. Your reply would appear to confirm that. Thanks for your input. This is my first time using the Apple support community, and I must say that I'm pleased with the prompt response to my queries.

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Answer 4

suzanne189 Author

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Feb 1, 2013 9:37 AM in response to PeterBreis0807

Thanks, Peter.

I have used the styles drawer to format my Table of Contents, I just want to add extra space between the main parts and shift a portion of the TOC to the second page. I can't insert the cursor without activating the style selections on the page. And I don't want to change the line spacing everywhere, so that's not an option. I just want to be able to edit the text as I would any other page.

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Answer 5

Feb 1, 2013 9:45 AM in response to suzanne189

Suzanne,

Yes, instinctively I thought that you wanted the readers‘ ease of use.

Beyond the scope of this discussion, but with the correct skill set, one could open up that ePub, and modify the HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) syntax. It might then be possible to force those TOC chapter headings to hop to their respective document locations. As you mentioned, using Word would eliminate this headache altogether.

Thank you for using the Apple Support Community. Wish there had been a simple solution to your need from within Pages.

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Answer 6

Feb 3, 2013 8:02 AM in response to suzanne189

As a footnote, I just created a three chapter document in Pages. Each chapter heading was a Heading 1 style. I then exported this to ePub.

It turns out that after synchronizing this ePub with iBooks 3.0.2 on my iPad, that the entire line of each Table of Contents entry is an active link to its respective book location. It isn't yet clear to me if this is a function of the actual ePub 2.0 specification, or added value by Apple Engineering within iBooks.

Hope the clarity helps.

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