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Adding a table of contents to a long document such as a report or a formal paper is a nice touch to help readers find information. In this post we will show the step by step process it takes to create a table of contents in Microsoft Word 2013.
1. Mark the titles in your document by highlighting them and then clicking to apply one of the “Heading” styles listed in the “Styles” section of the “Home” tab in the Ribbon. Apply the “Heading 1” style to these main titles. They will appear in your table of contents as the main chapter titles.
2. Find the subordinate sections and apply the “Heading 2” style to these sections. If you have subordinate lessons within these sections, then you can select those titles and apply the “Heading 3” style to them.
3. Click into your document to place the insertion marker at the place in the document where you want the table of contents to appear.
4. Click the “Table of Contents” button in the “Table of Contents” button group on the “References” tab in the Ribbon.
5. Select one of the “Automatic” table of content styles listed or create a custom table of contents.
6. To create a custom table of contents, select the “Custom Table of Contents…” command from the button’s drop-down menu to open the “Table of Contents” dialog box and display the “Table of Contents” tab where you can customize the style and appearance of the table of contents.
7. Use the “Print Preview” section to see how your table of contents will print. There are also options for changing the appearance of the printed version of your table of contents. You can also select the desired style of leader tab to connect the chapter titles to the page numbers from the “Tab leader:” drop-down.
8. In the “General” section, you can alter the general settings of the table of contents. Use the “Formats:” drop-down to select a general format for the table of contents. Use the “Show levels:” spinner box to enter the number of subordinated levels to display within your table of contents. *Note, however, that in addition to changing the levels to display in the table of the contents here, you will also need to format those titles within your document using the additional subordinate heading styles, such as “Heading 4,” Heading 5,” and so on, before they will appear in your table of contents.
9. Once you have set all of the options for your table of contents, simply click the “OK” button to insert your table of contents.
Note that the table of contents is simply a field. Like all fields, you can toggle the display of the field code between the actual table’s contents and the field’s contents by clicking into the table of contents and then pressing “Shift” + “F9” on your keyboard to toggle the view.
