TOC Entry Formatting Error

Question

Worked through the online help at http://help.adobe.com/en_US/indesign/cs/etc., and all has fallen into place except for the formatting of the entries within the table of contents itself.
There are two levels of main text: chapter and section. Each has its own style. There is a separate style of TOC entry for each level. In Layout | TOC table, each entry style is selected for the respective level in "Include Paragraph Styles".
In the actual table of contents, the entry is shown formatted according to the main text level rather than the entry style, except for one section header, whose TOC entry is formatted correctly. All other section headings are formatted the same. I xcannot detect any difference in the way that individual heading is formatted.

Answer 1

Jack Cane wrote:
What I'm taking away from this discussion is that, to insure quality, I should redo all images using 'Place' instead of 'Paste'. Please confirm.
That's correct.
Now about your TOC problem....
Every single bit of text in that test file has both a paragraph style and a charcter style applied, and in some cases a local override as well. This tells me that you really don't understand how styles are used in ID. All text is auotmaitcally styled with a paragraph style (Basic Paragraph if you don't designate something else). This paragraph style should set the specifications COMPLETELY for how paragraphs of that type should look so that no further modifications need to be made. If you need another "look" for a different paragraph, you define another style. You can base one style on another, and those arrtibutes that are not changed will update if you edit the base style.
Character styles are used to change the appearance of "special case" text within a larger paragraph, not to define the way an entire paragraph should appear (see above). Character styles are not considered "overrides" of paragraph style formatting, so they are not automatically removed when you change paragraph styles, even if you choose to remove overrides. This is the problem in your TOC -- the correct paragraph styles are being assigned, but because the text being picked up carries character styles, those character styles are still being applied in the TOC, and in some cases local formatting is being picked up as well (you'll see the telltale + after a stylename when that happens).
Bottom line, you need to remove the character styles and local formatting from the paragraphs in the book, and then the TOC should format correctly.