Hidden table columns still show up in table of contents

Question

I have a table with a column called “ref”. Inside this column is some text which is set to a heading with a value like “A-1” which means i can see it in a table of contents (which I want).

Now i want to use some of this data on another page so I create an excerpt and excerpt the table into another page. But I don’t want the ref column (partially because I don’t want the table of contents to get messed up) so I hide it using a table filter / or a table transform (it doesn’t matter).

No matter how I hide it, the column stops showing but the table of contents shows the text inside the column… even if I transform it so it shouldn’t even have the data in the table at all.

This is reproducible within a single page. Make a table where one column has some text which is a heading then hide the column and the text still appears on table of contents.

Is this a bug? Is there a way around it?

Stiltsoft support · Accepted Answer

Hi @Scott Dyer ,

Seems that everything works as expected: the Table of Contents macro collects all the headings searching for them by the html tags.

The Table Filter/Table Transformer macro virtually hide the column (it is still present on the page with all the html tags, the data is not deleted in reality). So, your column just visibly disappears from the page when published.

But the Table of Contents macro still sees suitable tags and collects all the headings.

The workaround may be not to put any headings in tables. If you want a heading somewhere on the same level as your table (for better navigation or smth), you may use layouts and Column/Section macros to place your text along the table (not under or before).