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KB0348: How can I avoid having a large table of contents at the front of the book?

See also:
Building a table of contents in the Jutoh manual
How can I have multiple tables of contents and a master table of contents?
How can I move the table of contents from the start of the book?

Although some devices (such as Kindle) present the first page after the table of contents when the reader opens a new book, others will start with the cover, and your reader will need to page through the table of contents and any other front matter to get to the first chapter.

If the table of contents is very long, this may not be ideal. By default, Jutoh generates the table of contents from all the section titles in your book, so if your book has a lot of chapters, or is a box set, the table of contents will be verbose.

One solution is to simply make the table of contents shorter, so the reader will have just a page or two to skip. To do this, use the menu command Format | Book | Build Table of Contents. This creates a new section in your project, extracting headings from the book to create a hierarchy (or using document titles if it can't find headings). You can then move this section to wherever you want in the project by dragging it in the project organizer. By limiting the number of levels that Jutoh searches for, you can limit the verbosity of the TOC, especially for a box set where you might only want the book titles to be in the TOC.

You could also edit the generated TOC manually to reduce its length, so long as you don't regenerate it which will overwrite your edits.

Another solution is to have two tables of contents - a short one near the front, and a longer one at the back of the book. A simple way of doing this is to generate the verbose TOC using Format | Book | Build Table of Contents; then move it to the back of the book, and change the document title and heading to something like "Full Table of Contents". Also edit its document properties and set the guide type to (none) to avoid Jutoh finding and overwriting this TOC.

Then run Format | Book | Build Table of Contents again and change the heading styles to search for, to create a less verbose TOC. You might want to edit it manually.

Instead of the above approach, you could use Jutoh's multiple tables of contents facility to maintain two TOCs simultaneously, which has the advantage that fewer manual edits will be required and the TOCs can probably be regenerated without manual changes. Here are the steps to do it:

  1. Click Format | Book | Build Table of Contents to make your main TOC, that will be near the front of your book. Specify just one heading level.

  2. Drag the new TOC to the desired position near the front of the book.

  3. Create a new book section document and name it something like "Full Table of Contents".

  4. Drag it to the end of the book in the Organizer.

  5. Click Edit on the toolbar and then on Indexes. Click '+'.

  6. Enter "Full Table of Contents" for the Table name.

  7. Click Set and select your new Full Table of Contents document.

  8. Leave Guide type blank.

  9. Change the Table title to "Full Table of Contents".

  10. Click OK and then Run Table of Contents Wizard. Choose e.g. 3 levels to make it a detailed TOC.

  11. Click OK to close the Project Properties, and then run Book | Update and check Table of Contents and Custom Tables of Contents. Click Update.

You will now have a short main TOC pointing to the top-level documents; and a larger TOC with more detail.

Or, you can switch off the TOC altogether by editing your configuration(s) and clearing the option Generate table of contents, but this is not recommended as it will cause standard ebook reader TOC buttons to be disabled which may give the impression of a broken book.


Contents | Start | End | Previous: KB0347: Why are there problems reading my Epub in Apple Books? | Next: KB0349: Why does my project contain duplicate styles?