Create and manage a table of contents

A Table of Contents provides a hierarchy of the sections (earlier called books) and pages (topics) that you have in the output of your project. The Table of Contents gives the reader an ability to view the publication as a whole and its topics. With a Table of Contents, the reader can quickly select and view a topic of their choice.

You can have multiple Tables of Contents in a single project, depending on the type of output that you want for your readers. For example, you can have a Table of Contents to cater to a specific audience (say, Developers) and another Table of Contents for a different audience (say, End users). You can simultaneously maintain the two Table of Contents files in the Table of Contents panel.

At the time of publishing your project, the entire project is not included in the output generated. Only the topics (and the referenced files inside these topics) in the selected Table of Contents file are included.

With RoboHelp, you can create two types of TOCs: "Online TOC" and "Book TOC". The Online TOC  has sections and topics and is applicable for Frameless, Responsive HTML5, and other online outputs whereas, the Book TOC   has front matter and back matter useful for PDF and Word outputs.

To create a Table of Contents:

Edit a Table of Contents

You can edit a Table of Contents file in two modes–quick edit mode and comprehensive edit mode.

Quick edit mode is accessible as a context menu in the Table of Contents panel after you expand a Table of Contents file. This mode does not launch the Table of Contents editor or display the Table of Contents toolbar.

Comprehensive edit mode launches the Table of Contents editor and displays the Table of Contents toolbar at the center of the standard toolbar. To edit a Table of Contents file in the comprehensive edit mode:

Customize Table of Contents for Online TOC

The Online TOC is an organized listing of the sections and topics of your publication. You can also link another TOC, insert Child Project, insert Child HTML Help file, auto-create TOC as follows:

Insert topic

Quickly insert a topic in the TOC by dragging it from the Contents panel and dropping it in the Table of Contents.

Or, follow these steps:

Insert section

Quickly insert a section in the TOC by dragging the folder from the Contents panel and dropping it in the Table of Contents. RoboHelp retains the original hierarchy of the section in the Table of Contents.

Or, follow these steps:

Link Another TOC

You can achieve collaborative authoring in RoboHelp where multiple writers can work on their individual sections. Using another TOC, you can create a merged output from individual TOCs. To do so, you can insert another TOC in your current Table of Contents. RoboHelp retains the original hierarchy of topics and sections in a placeholder, which is expanded as a complete Table of Contents in the output generated.

Quickly insert a Table of Contents by dragging it from the Table of Contents panel and dropping it in the current Table of Contents. 

Or, follow these steps:

Insert Child HTML Help (.chm) File

To merge a CHM file into your project, follow these steps: 

Auto-create TOC

Quickly create a Table of Contents using Auto-create TOC. This feature uses the hierarchy of the folders and topics in your project to create a Table of Contents file.

To auto-create Table of Contents:

Reorder items in a Table of Contents

To quickly reorder the items inside a Table of Contents file, do one of the following:

• Use drag-and-drop
• Click the following icons in the Table of Contents toolbar or from the Move context menu in the Table of Contents editor:
  •  Changes the hierarchy of the topic/section by moving it one level above the original level
  •  Changes the hierarchy of the topic/section by moving it one level below the original level
  •  Changes the order of the topic/section by moving it above the previous topic/section
  •  Changes the order of the topic/section by moving it below the next topic/section

Convert Topics to Sections

To convert each topic to a section inside a Table of Contents file, do one of the following:

• Select the topic you want to convert and click the right arrow  in the Table of Content toolbar.
• Right-click the topic  and choose Convert to Section .
  

Note: The right arrow  changes the hierarchy of the topic by moving it one level below the original level. So, if you click the right arrow on a topic, which is at the same level as the section, it gets merged in that particular section. If there is no section parallel to the topic, the topic remains at the same level and gets converted to section.

Delete items in a Table of Contents

To delete an item inside a Table of Contents file, do one of the following:

• Select the item and press Delete. 
• Right-click the item and click Delete. 
• Against the item, choose Options () > Delete.

Work with a Table of Contents' properties

The Table of Contents editor displays the Properties panel at the right side of the screen. 

The Type field displays the type of the currently selected item. For each item, you can set the following:

• Title Use this field to overwrite the existing title of a section or a topic.

• Source Displays the path of the selected item. You can replace the selected topic with a different topic from your project by clicking , choosing the topic, and clicking Update Topic. 

• Hide in output Select to hide the topic from the Table of Contents in the output.

• Apply Tags Click to apply condition tags to the selected item. From the Apply Condition Tags dialog box, select the condition tags you want to apply. The selected tags appear at the right side of the dialog box. Click Apply. The applied tags are displayed in the Properties panel below the Condition Tags drop-down section. In the Properties panel or in the Apply Condition Tags dialog box, you can click  against a tag to remove it.

• Tile Image Specify the image to use on homepage TOC tiles in the Frameless output. Click  to browse and select a desired image. If you do not specify any tile image to any topic or section, then the tile does not appear in the output. This way you can control what all tiles you want to show. If you disable the toggle, then the tile images will be the ones specified in the Skin Editor.
  
• TOC Icon: You can now include custom TOC icons for specific sections and topics in a Frameless output. From the TOC properties panel, for any section you can specify expand and collapse icons and for topic a single topic icon. In the output, these icons will override the icon specified in the skin. Navigate to the Topic Page tab, click on topic-icon item in the Left Panel section, you can specify the image in the Background property.
  

Customize Table of Contents for Book TOC

You can customize the TOC layout, as well as your content in the book. You can create special placeholders for displaying front matter and back matter sections as follows:

• Front Matter: Consists of very first pages before the actual content. The front matter can contain a Cover page, foreword, preface, and table of contents.
• Back Matter: What you find at the end of the book. The back matter can include an appendix, a glossary, and an index, all optional.
• Citations: The ones you find at the end of the content. Consists of all the citations used across the project as bibliography.

Insert Front Matter

Insert Back Matter

Use a desired Table of Contents in your output

To use a Table of Contents in the output:

Cut, Copy, and Paste in a Table of Contents

To cut, copy, and paste the content in the active Table of Contents, select your content, and right-click the mouse button for a Quick Menu. Click either Cut or Copy, then place your cursor where you want to put the content and click the Paste command.

Alternatively, if you open two Table of Contents positioned side-by-side, you can also drag items from one Table of Content to another Table of Content, which is a copy-and-paste operation.

Rename a Table of Contents

To rename a Table of Contents:

Delete a Table of Contents

To delete a Table of Contents: