Is there a way to have a hidden table of contents?

[Jennifer Murphy]

I have a $todo style that I have used for years to place action items in
a development document. I use a special table of contents to generate a
list of the ToDos with hyperlinks.

{ TOC \h \z \t "$todo,1" }


Up to now, I've put the TOC at the end of the document. I am writing a
user guide where I want to use the $todo style and TOC, but I don't want
it to be visible if I print the document or convert it to a PDF. I just
change the $todo style to hidden and now the TOC field above complains
that there are no heading entries for the TOC.

Is there any way to have a TOC include hidden headings?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Do you get the error message even when Hidden text is displayed? What
version of Word? Is this a different version from the one in which this
previously worked?

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Jennifer Murphy]

Do you get the error message even when Hidden text is displayed? What
version of Word? Is this a different version from the one in which this
previously worked?

I'm using Word 2007 on Win XP. All updates current.

It works perfectly if at least one todo entry is unhidden. It doesn't
matter whether the TOC field is hidden. It doesn't matter what the $todo
style contains. If I start with 3 todo entries (all unhidden), I'll have
a TOC with three entries. If I hide any 2, I'll still have a TOC with
the unhidden one. If I hide the last one, I get the error:

No table of contents entries found.

I always have Word set to display hidden text (with the dotten
underline).

I can create a little test document, if anyone wants to look at it.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I guess there's a certain logic to this. If I correctly understand where
you're going with this, you have a TOC (formatted as Hidden) that links to
To Do entries that serve as private reminders to you. When you have taken
care of a To Do, you make it hidden and it no longer appears in the TOC. So
when you have performed all the tasks, all the To Do's are hidden, and you
presumably don't really need the reminder list any more. And it's not going
to print anyway. So the real issue is just that you're getting an error
message and that's annoying?

What I suppose you could do is lock the TOC (Ctrl+F11). If it can't update,
then presumably it can't throw an error.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org