MS-Word / General Formatting

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Creating a Table of Contents

If you assign heading styles to your document's headings, creating a table of contents is easy. Just follow these simple steps:

1. Move the insertion point to the place where you want the table of contents to appear.
   The TOC generally appears on its own page near the beginning of a document. Press Ctrl+Enter to create a new page if necessary, and then click to position the insertion point on the empty page.
2. Open the References tab on the Ribbon and then click the Table of Contents button in the Table of Contents group.
   A menu that lists several Table of Contents styles is displayed.
3. Click the Table of Contents style you want to use.
   The TOC is added to the document. Note that the shaded frame that's drawn around the table of contents is visible only when you hover the cursor over the table. This frame doesn't appear when you print the document.

If you don't like any predefined tables of contents, you can create a customized TOC by clicking the Table of Contents button in the Table of Contents group of the References tab on the Ribbon and then choosing Insert Table of Contents. This action summons the Table of Contents dialog box, from which you can manually choose the options for your table.

The Table of Contents dialog box lets you (among other things) select these options:

1. Show Page Numbers: Deselect this check box if you want the TOC to show the document's outline but not page numbers.
2. Right Align Page Numbers: Deselect this check box if you want the page numbers placed next to the corresponding text rather than at the right margin.
3. Tab Leader: Use this drop-down list to change or remove the dotted line that connects each TOC entry to its page number.
4. Formats: Use this drop-down list to select one of several predefined formats for the table of contents.
5. Show Levels: Use this control to specify which heading levels to include in the table.
6. Use Hyperlinks Instead of Page Numbers: Toggle on/off this option to switch between including page numbers in the TOC (useful for printed documents) and making each TOC entry a live hyperlink to the page of the document being referenced (useful for onscreen documents).

Here are some additional techniques to remember when you compile a TOC:

• You can make changes directly to a TOC by clicking in the table and typing. However, this idea is a bad one because any changes you make are lost the next time you regenerate the table of contents. See the later section "Updating a Table of Contents" for more information.
• Unfortunately, Word doesn't add Chapter 1 in front of the TOC entry for Chapter 1. If you want chapter numbers to appear in your TOC, you must include them in the paragraphs formatted with a style that is included in the TOC (such as Heading 1).
• To delete a TOC, select the entire table and press Delete. Or, click the Table of Contents button on the References tab on the Ribbon. From the menu that appears, choose Remove Table of Contents.
• Word formats entries in a TOC with a set of standard styles named TOC 1, TOC 2, TOC 3, and so on. If you don't like any of the predefined formats in the Formats list in the Table of Contents dialog box, select From Template from the list and click the Modify button. A special version of the Style dialog box, showing only the standard TOC styles, appears. You can then change the appearance of your table by modifying the various TOC styles.