Manually creating tables of contents (TOCs) for a large book is a real pain — I know, I’ve been doing for some time. Well, I’d been creating TOCs in MS Word and updating the numbers manually.

It’s actually fairly straightforward, assuming you’ve used styles to create your document (and shame on you if you haven’t). To save even more time, you’ll also want to create styles for your TOC.

To create the TOC, go to Edit>Lists. This dialog box will appear.

This is pretty similar to creating a new style. Press New to set everything up.

Select the heading styles on the left you want in your TOC and use the arrow key to bring them into the window. In this example I’ve selected the styles for chapter names and level one headings. Use the Level drop-down box to construct the hierarchy. The Numbering option is set to the heading text followed by the page number. Then finally, select the style you’ve set up for your TOC style. Press OK when you’re done.

Importing your table of contents

To generate your TOC, place the cursor in the text box where you want the contents to appear. Display the Lists box by selecting it from the Window menu.

Press Update to refresh the list, then select Build. If you’ve set it up right, your formatted TOC with page numbers will appear fully formed.

I’ve found this works pretty well. There’s no automatic update function, so you do have to manually update and reimport. What you may have to do — particularly if your TOC is in columns — is use manual line breaks to tidy up the contents page (though obviously do this towards the end of the job).

This function is also useful for internet versions of documents, as Acrobat can use this feature to create bookmarks and hyperlinks, making it easier to navigate around your PDFs.

Here’s a typical usage dialog box for one of my projects, after selecting fonts on the left-hand pane.

Looking at this, there are two things that need fixing:

1. On a document based on Helvetica Neu, some Arial has crept in to the document, almost certainly from the imported Word file. Clicking ‘replace’ gives you the option of changing it to your favoured font. You may wish to select ‘show first’, which shows you where it is before you do this (the button has fallen off the page in the graphic above). It’s often something very small, such as a stray paragraph mark or single paragraph. Times New Roman has a habit of creeping into Quark files as well, usually on the superscript numbers that link to footnotes.
2. You’ll notice one of the fonts is HelveticaNeue LT 45 Light <B>. As I explained on this post, this isn’t a true bold font and will ring alarm bells when you see it on your final proofs. In this case I would replace this with HelveticaNeue LT 55 Roman <P>, a heavier font I’m using for bold text.

(On a Mac, fonts display a little differently, but the principle still holds.)

The bullets and numbering problem

Importing text has one big problem — for some reason, using Import Text causes you to lose the automatic bullet points and numbering in MS Word, which can be a real headache especially if your publication has numbered headings and lots of bullet points.

Thankfully, there is a way around this and it means setting up a macro in Word. There doesn’t seem to be a straightforward way of saving macros, so I’ll have to talk you through some code.

Open up Notepad and paste in the following text:

Attribute VB_Name = "NewMacro" 

Sub ConvertAutoNumsandBullets()
'
' Numsbullets Macro
' Macro recorded 07/04/2006 by Brookes
'
    ActiveDocument.ConvertNumbersToText
    Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1, Extend:=wdExtend
    Selection.Copy
    Selection.MoveLeft Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1
    Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
    Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
    With Selection.Find
        .Text = ChrW(61623)
        .Replacement.Text = "·"
        .Forward = True
        .Wrap = wdFindContinue
        .Format = True
        .MatchCase = False
        .MatchWholeWord = False
        .MatchWildcards = False
        .MatchSoundsLike = False
        .MatchAllWordForms = False
    End With
    Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End Sub

Save the file as NewMacro onto your desktop.

In MS Word, go to Tools>Macro>Visual Basic Editor. In the left hand pane, right-click on the ‘Normal’ icon (you may have to select View > Project Explorer to make this visible). Select Import File, then select the Notepad file you’ve just created (you’ll have to select Files of Type>All Files to make it visible). Close the editor, clicking Save if prompted to do so.

The next step is to make a shortcut to this macro via a button in MS Word. Select Tools>Customize, then select the commands tab. Select Macros in the left hand pane then find the new file — it will be called Normal.NewMacro.ConvertAutoNumsandBullets.

Drag this onto one of your toolbars at the top of the screen. The new button will have a long and unwieldy name — with the Customize box still open, right-click on the new button and select Default Style. You may want to right-click again and select Change Button Image, to display a distinctive icon. (If you’re really motivated, there’s a function in the drop-down menu to make your own button.)

I found this macro sometime last year — someone had thoughtfully posted it on the web (I’d gladly credit them if I could find it again). Running the macro, by pressing the button you’ve just made, converts all automatic numbers and bullets into editable characters, which will import into Quark.

Of course, this command is not reversible at a later stage, so keep a backup of your original file just in case.

A strange problem with indents

Another odd glitch I’ve noticed comes when you’re importing numbered headings with indents, of the form 1[tab]Introduction, for example.

QuarkXPress has an odd habit of making the indent spacing smaller than you’ve defined it in your Quark styles.

Initially, I had to fix this heading-by-heading, but a better way is to go back to your Word file and amend all the paragraph and tab settings so they match your settings in QuarkXPress. It will only take a minute or two to amend the Word style sheets then reimport into Quark.

If you regularly use the same QuarkXPress templates, you can import MS Word files into Quark without too much fuss, as long as your styles have the same names in both programs.

When the Import Text dialog box appears, be sure to select ‘Include Style Sheets’. If you have set up corresponding styles, you’ll get a conflict box in Quark informing you the names are in use. Simply tick the ‘Repeat For All Conflicts’ box and select ‘Use Existing’.

If you’ve only set up styles in Word, you can still import them and edit them in Quark.

Which Word features import into QuarkXPress?

Actually, not a great deal, but you need to think of MS Word as essentially a text editor, not a page layout program.

Things that import well

• Anything associated with the font menu, such as typeface, type size and formatting such as bold, italic, underline, superscript, subscript and so on
• Paragraph breaks, line breaks, tabs, section breaks, page breaks
• Word processor styles, assuming you enable this on the File>Import Text dialog box

Things that don’t import

• Images
• Fields
• Headers
• MS Word’s automatic bullets and numbers (although there is a workaround for this problem, which is discussed here)

Things that import imperfectly

• Tables — the contents of tables do come through, but appear as characters separated by tabs. If the tables are fairly small, then you’re probably better off recreating them using Quark’s table function. If they’re big, it’s worth getting your authors to do them in Excel, as Quark can import Excel tables
• Footnotes — the footnote text is imported, but all the footnotes appear at the end of the text string and not on the relevant pages. There are Quark XTensions that enable automatic footnotes (such as this one), but realistically you’re probably stuck with inserting them manually. This is quite a serious deficiency in QuarkXPress
• Hyperlinks — MS Word’s automatic hyperlinks come through as blue, underlined text, which you’ll have to get rid of one way or another. It’s a good idea to get authors to turn this function off in Word.

Anything else?

• Many authors collaborate using Word’s Track Changes function. Before you import text into Quark, ensure this is disabled by using the Accept All Changes in Document and Delete All Comments in Document functions.