Table of Contents - Word

Introduction

If (and only if) one used styles in creating a document in Word, a functional and dynamic table of contents can be generated.

Inserting a Table of Contents

First off, the text of the document should be edited with styles, with the chapter headings that are to appear in the TOC using the Header series of styles. If you have only one level of heading, it should be heading1 style. If you want subheadings they should use the next available heading number. While it is possible to use any style as a header (insert-->index and tables--> options), the index and tables dialog expects the preset heading styles by default.

• Insert --> Index and Tables
• choose the "table of contents" tab
• Pick a formating style.(these are just TOC style that can be modified in Format--> Styles)
• Choose a tab leader from the lower right hand corner
• In "show levels" select the levels of headings you want to appear in the TOC
• Hit "ok"

Now all this will give you is a field (shiver), (which youll prolly want to put a section break after, and change the numbering style in each section if you dont want the toc to be on page 1 and not like, iv-i) to see the output of the field one can use print preview.

Editing the field

Now you will see something like { TOC /o "1-3"} Which of course, leads to the question what does that mean? and what else can i stuff in there?

• TOC stands for Table of Contents.
• \o with its argument "1-3" tells Word to use Headings 1-3 to build the table of contents.

Other possible switches:

• \n if you dont want to display page numbers in the TOC. If you want some headers to have page numbers and some not use \n with and argument of the headings to be ommited. such as {TOC \o "1-3" \n 2-3} would display heading levels 1-3 in the TOC but only have page numbers for the heading1 style.
• \b for a partial table of contents. Perhaps you want to put a table of contents for each chapter at the beginning of that chapter. Select the portion of the document you want the table of contents to cover and assign a bookmark (insert-->bookmark), such as “Chapter1.” Then insert the \b switch, followed by the bookmark name, in the TOC field, like this: { TOC \b Chapter1 \o "1-3" }
• \p insert custom leader, doesnt work very well, use the leaders in the TOC dialog.
• \w preserves tab entries within table entries. (im not really sure)
• \x preserves line breaks in headings.
• \s and \d \s put a chaper number before the page number. \d indicates the seperator.