Bug 169210 - Support updating only the page numbers in a ToC
Summary: Support updating only the page numbers in a ToC
Status: UNCONFIRMED
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Writer (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
26.2.0.0 alpha0+ master
Hardware: All All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: needsUXEval
Depends on:
Blocks: TableofContents-Indexes
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2025-11-02 13:17 UTC by Eyal Rozenberg
Modified: 2025-12-02 04:58 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
Table of Contents for testing. (22.24 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text)
2025-11-12 03:22 UTC, GJord
Details
Screenshot of ToC right-click. (282.57 KB, image/png)
2025-11-12 03:28 UTC, GJord
Details

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Description Eyal Rozenberg 2025-11-02 13:17:41 UTC
At the moment, there is only one kind of ToC update: Recreating the entire ToC, getting rid of any manual changes which may have been made to it.

But - it's possible the user wants to make manual changes, on the one hand, but not let the ToC become irrelevant due to typing some more content or removing some content elsewhere in the document - changes which only affect the page number, and are generally applicable without  "messing up" the manual changes the user made to the ToC.

I suggest we also support this partial kind of update.


IIANM, Microsoft Word supports updating page numbers without recreating the entire ToC.
Comment 1 GJord 2025-11-12 03:22:05 UTC
Created attachment 203880 [details]
Table of Contents for testing.
Comment 2 GJord 2025-11-12 03:28:35 UTC
Created attachment 203881 [details]
Screenshot of ToC right-click.
Comment 3 GJord 2025-11-12 03:28:43 UTC
Screenshot provided. 

Enhancement not yet implemented on 25.8.2.2. Request remains valid and would help preserve manual ToC modifications.
Comment 4 Buovjaga 2025-11-14 10:01:01 UTC
UX: encouraging manual manipulation of ToC doesn't make sense to me. What do you think?
Comment 5 Eyal Rozenberg 2025-11-14 10:13:15 UTC
(In reply to Buovjaga from comment #4)
> encouraging manual manipulation of ToC doesn't make sense to me.

That's a fair point, but - we do explicitly support this. The reasons seem to be some combination of history, imitation of MS Word's behavior, and the fact that it's often the case that the automatic layout of the ToC has some kind of issue with the results of tabulation, spacing, overflow etc., and the author may want to tweak it. Perhaps even use alter the item text slightly to improve the layout.

Of course, it's good that others chime in about this as well, so thanks for setting the flag.
Comment 6 Heiko Tietze 2025-12-02 04:58:08 UTC
(In reply to Eyal Rozenberg from comment #5)
> ... the automatic layout of the ToC has some kind of issue
This does not justify a crooked function.

-1