Troubleshooting
Missing or misordered front/back matter
How you'd notice this
Flipping through the file, the title page, copyright page, dedication, or table of contents is missing entirely, appears in an unexpected order, or shows up in the wrong place relative to Chapter One (e.g. the copyright page appearing after the dedication, or a table of contents missing altogether).
Why it happens
Front and back matter don't get auto-generated the way a chapter list does, each page has to be deliberately created and placed in the standard order (title page → copyright page → dedication (optional) → table of contents → Chapter One ... back matter after the last chapter). It's easy to skip one while drafting and forget to add it back before formatting, or to insert a new front-matter page without checking it landed in the conventional order.
How to fix it
You haven't picked a formatting program yet, so every program's steps are shown below, pick a tab for the one you're using.
- Manually verify the sequence page by page: title page, copyright page, dedication (if used), table of contents, then Chapter One. Use page/section breaks (Layout > Breaks > Next Page) between each so they don't run together.
- For the table of contents, use References > Table of Contents so it auto-populates from your Heading-styled chapter titles rather than being typed and re-typed by hand every time chapters change.
- Verify the same sequence manually, title page, copyright page, dedication (if used), table of contents, Chapter One, each separated by Insert > Break > Page break.
- Insert > Table of contents auto-builds from your Heading-styled chapter titles, same idea as Word, don't hand-type one that will go stale.
- Use the dedicated Front Matter and Back Matter sections in the outline sidebar. Atticus already provides page types for Title Page, Copyright, Dedication, and more, and you drag them into the order you want, so a missing page is usually just one not yet added from that list.
- Atticus can auto-generate a Table of Contents from your chapter outline, check the Front Matter section for a Table of Contents page type rather than typing one manually.
- Verify the sequence directly in the Pages panel (Window > Pages), title page, copyright page, dedication (if used), table of contents, then Chapter One.
- Use Layout > Table of Contents, generated from paragraph styles applied to your chapter titles, so it can be regenerated (Layout > Update Table of Contents) instead of manually retyped when content shifts.
- Verify the order in your Binder itself, front-matter documents before Chapter One, back-matter documents after your final chapter, this is the source of truth Compile reads from.
- Once compiled to Word, double-check the resulting file's page-by-page order too, and build a real Word table of contents there rather than typing one, Scrivener doesn't generate a linked TOC for a compiled print file.
- Manually verify the sequence page by page: title page, copyright page, dedication (if used), table of contents, then Chapter One. Use Insert > Section Break between each so they don't run together.
- For the table of contents, use Insert > Table of Contents so it auto-populates from your heading-styled chapter titles rather than being typed by hand.
- Check your book's outline/structure panel for the built-in front-matter and back-matter element types (Title Page, Copyright, Dedication, Acknowledgments, About the Author), a missing page is usually just one not yet added from that list.
- Order is controlled by where each element sits in the outline, drag to reorder rather than trying to move content within the typeset preview.
- Check Vellum's element list (Add + menu) for the built-in front-matter and back-matter element types (Title Page, Copyright Page, Dedication, Acknowledgments, About the Author), a missing page is usually just one not yet added.
- Order is controlled by where each element sits in Vellum's chapter/element list, drag to reorder.
- Verify the same sequence manually, title page, copyright page, dedication (if used), table of contents, Chapter One, each separated by Insert > More Breaks > Insert Page Break.
- Insert > Table of Contents and Index > Table of Contents auto-builds from your Heading-styled chapter titles, don't hand-type one that will go stale.