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How To Create A Quick Table Of Contents
One of the key pieces of any major document is the Table of Contents. Not only does it provide the audience with a way to navigate a document when you’re done with it, but it gives you a way to quickly move from section to section while creating it. Since it’s such a common element of many documents, you would think that most people would know how to create one quickly. However, this is not the case. That’s why I decided to put together this quick guide to creating one.
*Note: You can get pretty complex when creating a Table of Contents in Word. For the purposes of this article, I’m not going to go through all the different ways you can create one, just some basic steps to get you started.
First, make sure that the headings you want in the TOC (Table of Contents) are labeled as one of the following:
Heading 1
Heading 2
Heading 3
By labeled I mean the type of the text. For example, the default setting for your text is Normal. To change this, simply go to Format -> Styles and Formatting…. This is where you can set your text to one of the above options. When setting your text to one of these settings, make sure that you use hierarchal order. For example, the Section 2 header of your document could be formatted as Heading 1, Section 2.1 as Heading 2, and section 2.1.1 as Heading 3. The reason you want to label your text as one of the three above mentioned headings is that when you create your TOC, it will use these as the entries in the table.
Now you are ready to create your TOC. Go to where you want to insert your TOC and select Insert -> Reference -> Index and Tables…. Then, click on the Table of Contents tab. It’ll give you a preview of how your different levels of headings will be shown in the table. You can play around with some of these options if you want, but for a quick table simply click OK. Voila, you have a new TOC!
To update this table after you’ve inserted it, right click on the TOC and select Update Field. In the resulting dialog box, click Update entire table. This will modify the table to include any changes you have made to the formatted titles and update the corresponding page numbers. If you select Update page numbers only, only the page numbers will be updated. I haven’t ever seen the need to use that option, so I always use Update entire table.
This is a quick run-through for creating a Table of Contents. You can change things such as the hierarchy level for headings, display, etc. Play around with it and find what works for you.
Tags: how-to-create-a-table-of-contents, Microsoft Word, microsoft-office, microsoft-office-free-tutorials, microsoft-office-quick-tips, microsoft-word-table-of-contents, table-of-contents, table-of-contents-help, word
This entry was posted on Thursday, August 3rd, 2006 at 11:55 pm and is filed under Microsoft Office Help, Microsoft Word. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
