Creating a Table of Contents
October 15th, 2005Do you need to add a Table of Contents (hereafter referrred to as TOC) to a document? It’s much easier than you think. And there’s certainly no need to type it out the long way.
However, there is something you must do before you create the TOC: Use heading styles throughout your document. To format text as a heading style, just select the text and then select the heading style (Heading 1, Heading 2, etc.) from the Style drop-down list (located to the left of the Font drop-down list–it probably says “Normal”).
After you have formatted everything in the document that you want to appear in the TOC as a heading style, move the insertion point to the top of the document (since this is probably where you want to put the TOC). Then select Insert | Reference | Index and Tables… The following dialog box will appear:
Make sure you have the Table of Contents tab selected. Add checks to the appropriate checkboxes if you want to show page numbers in the TOC (which you do–otherwise, what is the point of a TOC?), and if you want to right align the page numbers. Select the type of tab leader you want to connect the heading and the page number (usually a dotted line). Then select the format you want. Finally, tell Word how many heading style you want to include in the TOC. For example, you may have used Headings 1-5 in the document, but you may only want Headings 1-3 to show up in the TOC.
When you click OK, a TOC will be inserted at the insertion point.
Updating a Table of Contents
Great, you say, now that I have a spiffy TOC, what happens if I edit the document, add and delete text, and move sections to different pages?
No problem. Simply click into the TOC, and press the F9 function key on the top row of the keyboard. Word will display the following prompt:
Select the option you want. If you have inserted and/or deleted sections, select Update entire table; otherwise, you can just update page numbers. Word will regenerate the TOC, with the correct headings and page numbers.
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