How do I setup a Table of Figures in Pages

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Level 1

14 points

How do I setup a Table of Figures in Pages

I cannot set up a Table of Figures (TOF) in Pages. I have no problem in Word for the Mac but I cannot get it going in Pages.

I have created an identical document in both Pages and Word for Mac which contains both HEADINGS and Figures. Each Figure has a Caption annotated to it.

I have set up a Table of Contents (TOC) using "HEADING" in the Paragraph Styles, no problem. Then I set up another TOC below the TOC and the Paragraph Styles to be CAPTION but in Pages I get an error message in the place I was expecting the TOF to appear. It has the following message:

THE TABLE OF CONTENTS IS EMPTY BECAUSE YOU AREN'T USING THE PARAGRAPH STYLES SET TO APPEAR IN IT.

In Pages I have change the Paragraph Style setting to other settings but only works when I check the HEADING Box. Presumably because this is the only parameter available.

I also imported the same document from Word (which has a working TOC and TOF), all the TOCs were imported correctly and functioned as normal but the TOF was just an underlined link that did not do anything. On manually inserting a TOF at this point Pages did bring up a functional TOF but when clicked on it it took me to the imported TOF line and not the figure reference to it.

Can anyone help?

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.5)

Posted on Jul 6, 2018 5:55 AM

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Answer 1

Barry

Level 9

60,023 points

Jul 7, 2018 4:06 AM in response to Tommo54

Hi Tommo,

MS Word is not Pages.

Pages is not Word.

Although the feature sets of the two overlap, each has some features either not supported in the other or supported differently in the other.

Translation between files of the two applications is done entirely at the Pages end. When you import a Word document into Pages, the document is translated into a Pages document, and supports only the features available in Pages. When a Pages document is exported from Pages to a Word file, features supported only in Pages are dropped, or exported as text content of the file.

TOF is not a supported feature in Pages.

Regards,

Barry

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Answer 2

VikingOSX

Level 10

123,230 points

Jul 7, 2018 2:39 PM in response to PeterBreis0807

I believe one could automatically generate a Table of Figures based on the robust AppleScript dictionary for Pages '09 (it gives one access to individual paragraph styles). There simply is no comparison with Pages 7.1 — which is just another deserted member of the the Apple archipelago.

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Answer 3

Tommo54 Author

Level 1

14 points

Jul 7, 2018 4:02 AM in response to PeterBreis0807

Barry & Peter,

Many thanks for your prompt replies in trying to resolve my problem with getting a working TOF in Pages. I spent ages trying to resolve the issue to no avail but in doing so did learn many things about Pages.

My reason for this request is that I have many documents in Word and I am intending to let my subscription to Word lapse. Before this happens I wish to transfer my documents to Pages and continue from there. In my first document that I transferred I encountered the TOF problem. The TOF works fine in Word and also Table of Tables (TOT) and Table of Equations (TOE) but sadly not in Pages.

1. The nearest I got to having a TOF was to place a piece of text under an image "Figure 1 - Image of some flowers" for example. Then change the Paragraph Style to CAPTION for this text. Next to insert a TOC in the document above this image and change the Paragraph Style for this TOC to be CAPTION and deselect HEADING. (I think this is what you were referring to Peter).

2. One thing I did find was the >Insert >Image Gallery where you can allocate a position in your document where images can be dropped onto a rotating Gallery. Each image can have a Caption annotated to it but sadly this is not reflected in the TOF. The Image which is on current display is the image which will be printed. I'm not sure where this function would be used but it will be useful to someone. One reasoning is that a document can contain many images and tailored for each recipient.

I hope one day that Apple will include this as a feature in Pages as it is fundamental to Authors, researchers and the like, I have submitted a request to Apple so we will see. Now I have to evaluate if it is better to transfer my documents from Word or to leave them where they are in the hope that Apple see sense.

Many thanks.

Phil

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Answer 4

Jul 7, 2018 4:33 AM in response to Tommo54

Don’t count on “Apple seeing sense”.

My experience is that Apple is showing less sign of doing anything other than enjoying the fruits of previous hard work whilst working on its growing corporate middle age spread.

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Answer 5

Jul 7, 2018 4:06 AM in response to Tommo54

There is no specific Table of Figures in Pages but there is a Table of Contents.

The TOC picks up selected Paragraph Styles. It can be any Paragraph Style, you simply check it in list presented to you when you insert the TOC.

You must have applied the style to the paragraphs and it will pick up the entire paragraph, so if you have a long caption after the figure number and you do not want it in the TOC best to have it in a second following paragraph separated by a return.

The styled paragraphs must be after the TOC and will not include any automatic numbering from List Styles.

Because it is actually a TOC, if you want it to be separate from the actual TOC you will need to create both in 2 passes, the ToF first using only the Fig Numbers, export it as plain text and reimport it to create a manually formatted ToF. If you want to retain the internal links, clicking on the number takes you to the figure, you can do that using bookmarking.

i use a TOC to create a rear index at the back of a document in a PDF, by making a suitable TOC at the front of the document and moving the pages to the back in the PDF, the links are retained. I use Pages ‘09 for its far superior formatting but you can do something similar in Pages 7.1 despite Apple having removed so many features.

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How do I setup a Table of Figures in Pages

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