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Creating a Table of Contents
Word makes it easy to create a table of contents for formal papers or longer documents. The process is fairly simple and straightforward. First, you must mark each title that you want to have appear in your table of contents with one of the designated “Styles” that are available in Word- “Heading 1,” “Heading 2,” or “Heading 3.” You can then have Word automatically collect and display a table of contents based on the text that you have selected. Word will also update and maintain this information should you make editing changes after the table of contents has been created. This can save you hours of revision time when working with long documents.
First you must mark the titles in your document with one of the “Heading” styles listed in the “Styles” section of the “Home” tab in the Ribbon. Note that you can also simply select the text that you want to include in your table of contents, and then click the “Add Text” drop-down button in the “Table of Contents” group on the “References” tab in the Ribbon. Then you can select which of the heading styles to apply from the listing of styles displayed in this button’s drop-down menu.
Start by going through the document and selecting the major, or primary, section titles. Apply the “Heading 1” style to these main titles. They will appear in your table of contents as the main chapter titles.
Next, find the subordinate sections within each primary chapter, 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.
Once you have applied your heading styles to the titles in your document, it is then very easy to create a table of contents based on your selections. Start by clicking into your document in order to place the insertion point where you want your table of contents to appear. Then click the “Table of Contents” button in the “Table of Contents” group on the “References” tab in the Ribbon. Then select the “Insert Table of Contents…” command from the button’s drop-down menu in order to open the “Table of Contents” dialog box and display the “Table of Contents” tab within that dialog box. Here is where you can select the style and appearance of your table of contents.
At the top of this tab, you can see how your table of contents will print in the “Print Preview” section. Below that, you have options for changing the appearance of the printed version of your table of contents. If you don’t want to print page numbers, then click the “Show page numbers” checkbox in order to clear the check from the box. Also, page numbers, if selected, will default to being right-aligned. You can clear the check from the “Right align page numbers” checkbox in order to print the page number immediately after the chapter title. You can then select the desired style of leader tab to connect the chapter titles to the page numbers from the “Tab leader:” drop-down.
You can also see how your table of contents would appear if published as a web page in the “Web Preview” section. If you do not want the titles to appear as hyperlinks in the web page, then you can clear the check from the “Use hyperlinks instead of page numbers” checkbox.
In the “General” section, you can alter the general settings of the table of contents. You can select a different general format for your table of contents by selecting a different choice from the “Formats:” drop-down. If you need to display more than three levels within your table of contents, you can 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.
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.
Customizing a Table of Contents
You can customize the appearance of your table of contents in Word. When a table of contents is created by Word, it simply applies the default table of content styles- “TOC 1,” “TOC 2,” and so on. You can alter the appearance of these styles in your document in order to change the appearance of the text used to create your table of contents.
To do this, click the “Table of Contents” button in the “Table of Contents” group on the “References” tab in the Ribbon. Then choose the “Insert Table of Contents…” command from the button’s drop-down menu. That will open the “Table of Contents” dialog box and display the “Table of Contents” tab. Since you can only change the appearance of the default styles, ensure that the “Formats:” drop-down in the “General” section towards the bottom of this tab is set to “From template.” To change the appearance of the default table of content styles that are associated with the template, click the “Modify…” button to view the “Style” dialog box.
In the “Style” dialog box, start by clicking on the name of the table of contents style that you want to modify from the “Styles” list. A preview of the font that will be used will appear at the bottom of the “Style” dialog box. Click the “Modify…” button to the right of the style shown in order to open the “Modify Style” dialog box, where you can edit the formatting of the selected TOC style.
In the “Modify Style” dialog box, you can make any formatting changes that you want to apply to the selected TOC style. When you are done, click the “OK” button to return to the “Style” dialog box. You can repeat this process to modify any necessary TOC styles. Once you have finished modifying the TOC styles, just click the “OK” button to return to the “Table of Contents” dialog box. You should see the changes that you made in the “Print Preview” section shown at the top of this dialog box. At that point, just click the “OK” button in the “Table of Contents” dialog box to create the table of contents with your custom TOC styles.
Updating a Table of Contents
When you alter the content in your document after creating a table of contents, you can typically simply update the table of contents to refresh its display versus having to recreate the whole thing. Because the table of contents is simply a field code, it can be updated in the same manner that a Word table formula can. This can save you a lot of work in making changes to your table of contents, especially if working on documents that are often revised.
To update your table of contents, place the cursor into the table of contents that you want to update and then press the “F9” key on your keyboard. Alternately, you could simply right-click on the table of contents and then choose the “Update Field” command from the pop-up menu. In the “Update Table of Contents” dialog box that appears, you will need to select whether you want to “Update page numbers only” or “Update entire table” by selecting the option that you would like. Then just click the “OK” button to update the table of contents.
