In just a few clicks Microsoft Word can generate an automatic table of contents from all the headings and styles in your document. But in order for this to appear as it should, there are some very important steps you’ll need to take when creating your document.
The most important step by far is that you should always use paragraph styles. Any table of contents is generated based on these styles so if they haven’t been set correctly, the table of contents won’t appear correctly either.
So if you’re not familiar with paragraph styles and how they work, now’s the time! And if this seems quite complicated, don’t be tempted to try to create a table of contents manually. It won’t look good and keeping all the page numbers correct when you make changes to your document will just be a nightmare. It’s really worth understanding now how to do it properly.
Use paragraph styles
Every heading in your document should be created using a heading style. Word comes with several of these already built in such as Heading 1, Heading 2 and Heading 3. You might use these for your main headings, sub headings and any lower level headings. Simply select your heading text, click Heading 1 and it will be exactly the same font, size, weight and spacing as any other Heading 1 in your document.
And when it comes to creating a table of contents, this work really pays off as the table you create is fully dynamic. This means if you update a heading or add a new one, you can simply click to update your contents and any new item styled with Heading 1 will now appear alongside the correct page number showing.
Create table of contents
Okay, so you’ve been using heading styles in your document and you are ready to create a table of contents. Place the insertion pointer where you want your table of contents to appear, and now just head over to the References tab on the ribbon and the first group is called Table of Contents. Let’s do this properly so click on Custom Table of Contents. Let’s start by using the default settings, so just click OK. You should now see a table of contents appear which will include all the headings you created with the Heading 1, Heading 2 and Heading 3 styles.
More headings
For a lot of documents this is actually enough and you’re done. You can add more headings and then just put the insertion point into the table of contents, right click and choose Update Field and then Update entire table and the table of contents has now been updated.
Don’t forget to update your table of contents whenever you change any of the headings or change the content so the page numbers change. It’s really easy to do.
Styling a table of contents
If you need to create anything other than this default table of contents, it will help to understand a little more of how it works.
By default your heading styles will assume a level associated with each heading, with Heading 1 being level 1, Heading 2 is at level 2 etc. This simply means that the Heading 1 entries in the table of contents should be more prominent in the table of contents.
In fact, you shouldn’t be surprised to know that the table of contents actually uses styles itself. You can select any entry in the table of contents and you’ll see which style it used. Typically the styles will be TOC1, TOC2 etc. and these are already created for you in Word. Of course, just like any other styles, you can change the format to make your table of contents look better.
You might want to add some color to Heading 1, perhaps make it bold or capitals and then make sure that the TOC 2 styles (used by default by Heading 2) is indented and perhaps in a smaller font.
More advanced topics
You may come across a situation where you want to do something slightly different with the table of contents. You might want to omit page numbers for specific entries, you may want to add an entry in the table of contents which isn’t actually in the document as a heading, you may want to create a separate table of contents just for a section of a document. These are all things which a professional document formatter will be able to handle for you, but here are a few tips if you are trying to do them yourself.
Adding and omitting styles
Suppose you have some heading styles that you specifically want to include, or exclude from the table of contents. Well, it’s easy enough. Just go back to the button where you first entered the contents using the Customer table of contents button. Or, if you’ve already got a table of contents just right click on it and then choose Edit Field, select TOC from the list, and click the field properties button. You can now see all the styles in your document and check those that you want to appear in the table of contents and uncheck those that shouldn’t be there.
Going a bit further
The table of contents is actually a field in the document and if you want to do some more complex things with it, you’ll need to know how to edit the field itself. Put the insertion point into the beginning of the table of contents field and press Shift + F9. You will now see a field code between braces which will look something like { TOC \o “1-3” \h \z \u }
If you want to alter the behaviour of the table of contents you’ll need to make a few edits to this field. The key bit in this one is the ‘\o “1-3”’ which means include outline level 1 to 3. So Heading 1, Heading 2 and Heading 3 are automatically included. Obviously changing it to ‘\o “1-4”’ will also include Heading 3 in the table of contents.
‘\n 3-4’ omits page numbers from levels 3 and 4
‘\b “Chapter 1”’ will build a table of contents for all the content in the bookmark called “Chapter 1”. This is how you can create a table of contents for just a section of a document.
Other resources
There are a number of great resources to help you with tables of contents and one of the best is WordFAQs TOCTips
And because using paragraph styles is so vital to making this work, here are some great resources to understanding how they work.
Styles by Shauna Kelly is a good overview from someone with heaps of Word experience
HowToGeek Document Formatting Essentials provides a really good set of online lessons
Office Support Styles Videos is really easy to follow Microsoft training
and of course if you google “learning about Word styles” then there’s plenty more.
How can we help?
As you can see Word is very powerful, can do some amazing things for you with tables of contents, but can also be quite complex to get it to do exactly what you want. If you have some more complex requirements or would just rather leave it all to the experts, get in touch, we would be delighted to help you.
