How to update a table of contents when the feature "update table of contents" is unavailable?

Question

Hello folks,
I've been struggling all morning with this issue and am completely desperate.
First, some info:
- I am making a spanish versions of an english documents: everything in the original doc was then edited, including TOCs. What I got at first, was a first spanish document already filled with spanish content.
- I was not the primary creative of the document I'm workin on and am unable to get in touch with whoever that can be.
- My document is a 200 pages text only document, with 12 chapters and, at the beginning of each chapter, a specific TOC for that very chapter.
- Inside each chapter, there are only Sections and Subsections, no other style. Those are the two levels in the TOCs.
- There is also a General TOC at the beginning of the document: that one only shows the Chapter names and the page number where to locate them.
My problem:
- Somewhere along the way, from one doc to another, the TOCs stopped to update the page numbers automatically.
- Now I have sections and subsections that are shown in one page (for instance 204) but they actually are on page 135.
- When I try to update the TOCs, I stand on the TOC itself as I was told in many tutorials, but the "update table of contents" feature is unavailable, even in the main TOC at the very beginning of the doc.
It is like if I wasn't standing in the actual TOC, but there is no actual TOC anywhere that I could refer to.
What can I do? I am changing the wrong page numbers manually but, of course, that is not ideal... and it may become more and more tricky while I keep producing new documents each based on the previous one.
Any help will be much appreciated.
Warm regard from sunny Paris, France!
Sasha

Answer 1

You've just confused me.
My understanding of how this is set up is that either:
This is a book, and there is a master TOC that includes all book documents and a document-specific TOC in each component file, or
This is a single file and there is one master TOC that includes all sections and a section-specific TOC that includes only the individual section.
In the first case, I think you would want two TOC styles set up, one that includes the chapter heads (if I understood how you said this worked) for the for the master, and you would include all docs in the book when you generate it, and a second style for the individual chapters, with the subheadings you want to include.
In the second case, it would be similar, but instead of only one style to cover the section TOCS, I think you would need to create a unique set of pargraph styles for the headings in each section (they can all be the same format, based one section, just with unique names), and then make a TOC style for each section that includes only the styles from that section.
OK,  wait a sec. I just reread what you said: "Another thing: when the numbers are "linked" and updating well, they  display indide a little box. Not a text box, but a kind of little frame  around the numbers. That frame makes it imposible to delete just one  number: when the TOC says that Section 6.1 is in page 135, for example,  you cannot delete just the 5, it deletes, not just the 3 numbers, but  also the doted tab."
I think these are NOT normal TOCs created by using Layout > TOC (but you could replace them with ones that are, if you set up your styles properly and the text you want to include is appearing on the pages). Those little boxes you mention sound like cross-references, which should update automatically without any intervention at all. Unfortunately, cross-refs can be flakey, especially if they point to another document. I'd open the cross-refs panel and see if you need to recreate a bunch of links.