How Can I Generate a Table of Contents

There is a feature that allows you to create an “Index” file with Section names and associated pages. Because of the way indexing works, it is necessary to run the file twice, once to generate the index file and a second time to use that updated information. Here are the steps:

1. Right-click > “Add Index” from the “Indexes” container

2. Give the index a name of “TOC” and include just a single “Column” called “Section”S

3. In each section’s table definition, add a “Column Index Mapping” by selecting “%SECTION%” for the Column and the previously defined “Section” Index Alias

4. “Create PDF” and you will now have a new file in the same directory as your .aceprint file called something like "Index-"<catalog name>"-TOC.txt"

5. Copy this TOC index file to a subdirectory where you keep all the source files for your catalog (e.g. “Data”). This must be done each time you generate a new PDF so the catalog uses the updated information.

6. Create a new Section for your Table of Contents that uses the index file in your data directory

Tip: If you need to sort the TOC sections by page number, create an Access database with a “Linked Table” to your index file. Create a query that sorts by Val([Section_Pages]). Note that you will need to use the “Linked Table workaround” to get this to work.