How to Create a Table of Contents in Microsoft Word

A long time ago when I just started using Microsoft Word, I used to wait until I had written all sections of a report/document before creating a Table of Contents (TOC). I would literally write down the page numbers of each section flipping through them before I manually typed each entry into the TOC. If any changes were later made to the various sections, I’d have to manually change the entries in the TOC (e.g., page number changes). Well, those days are long gone thanks to Word’s automatic TOC generator. You can easily set up a TOC in Word that automatically links each section.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Microsoft Word
• Texts for a Report or Document

1. Figure 1 When creating the body of a report or document, use the heading styles (either predefined or one you’ve already defined) for your section headings. These include top level (i.e., level 1) to the lower subsections as shown in Figure 1. Create these starting on the second or preferably third page of your document since you’ll want the first few pages to be the Title and TOC pages.
2. Figure 2 Go to the page that you to insert a TOC and press the “Table of Contents” button from the References menu in Word 2007 as shown in Figure 2. Other versions of Word may have this option arranged differently.
3. Figure 3 Once the TOC is created, it will look something like the table shown in Figure 3. You can massage this table a little bit through formatting. For example, you can rename “Contents” as “Table of Contents” and also center it.
4. Figure 4 As you work on your document, you can update the TOC at any time by right-clicking anywhere on the table as shown in Figure 4 and selecting “Update Field.”
5. Figure 5 This will bring up a selection box as shown in Figure 5 where you can choose to update just the page numbers or the whole table. Usually, updating the whole table is the best option as it ensure no inconsistencies between the TOC and the rest of the report/document.