Table of Contents

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

The following articles are available for the 'Table of Contents' topic. Click the article's title (shown in bold) to see the associated article.

Adding Column Headings to a Table of Contents
Word makes it easy to create a Table of Contents. If you want column headings in that table, getting them takes a bit of ingenuity. Here's some ideas.

Creating a Simple TOC
Sometimes a table of contents created by Word can have a few too many bells and whistles. Here's how to get rid of the hyperlinks that Word automatically adds to a TOC.

Creating a Table of Contents from Heading Levels
If your document is any length at all, adding a table of contents is a nice touch. This tip demonstrates how easy it is to create a TOC based on the headings in your document.

Creating a Table of Contents from TOC Fields
If you inserted a bunch of TOC fields in your document, you can create your table of contents quite easily based on those fields. This comes in very handy for creating specialized TOCs that aren't based on your documents outline.

Creating a TOC that Includes Specific Styles
Want to create a special TOC that contains different elements of your document? It's easy to do if you consistently use styles. Here's how to create the special TOC.

Customized Tables of Contents
Generating a table of contents is easy in Word. Changing how that table of contents looks is also easy, provided you change the styles that Word automatically applies to the parts of the TOC.

Generating a TOC that Includes Text Boxes
If you place a lot of text inside text boxes, you may be surprised to find out that you cannot include any of that text in the table of contents for your document. This tip explains why this is the case and presents a possible solution to the problem.

Insert a TOC without Upsetting Pagination
Insert a table of contents in your document, and your page numbering may get thrown for a loop. If you want the page numbering to remain constant, then you'll appreciate the advice in this tip.

Locking Lines in a TOC
Want to "lock down" the lines in a TOC so that you cannot add new paragraph marks in the middle of one? You may not be able to lock things down as much as you want, for the reasons described in this tip.

Overriding Automatic Numbering of Tables
Word lets you add automatic numbering to different elements of your document. It does not, however, allow much flexibility in how those numbers are applied.

Page Ranges in a TOC
It is easy to generate a table of contents for a document, and that TOC can contain page number references for each heading. What it cannot contain, without manual intervention, is a range of page numbers covered by each heading.

Problems with TOC Styles
If you generate a table of contents for your document, there may be some unexpected surprises in the way the TOC appears. This could be directly related to how you have the headings in your document formatted.

Specifying a Table of Contents Entry
If you need to create a specialized table of contents, you need to know how to add TOC entries to your document. It's easy to do using a simple field.

TOC Heading Numbers Always Show in Bold
Linda's got a document that includes a table of contents that is based on headings in the document. When the headings include automatic numbering, she cannot get the numbers in the TOC to be non-bold. This tip discusses a possible cause (and solution), based on the relationship between the headings and the TOC generated from them.

Two-Line Headings in a TOC
If you use the TC field to mark what goes in a TOC, you may wonder why if you mark two lines together with the field they don't both end up in the TOC. The reason has to do with how Word puts together the TOC from the fields.

Updating an Entire TOC from a Macro
The TOC field is used to create a table of contents in a document. When you update the field, you have the option to update just the page numbers or the entire table. This tip explains how to update either the table or the page numbers from within a macro.

Using Multiple Tables of Contents
For some types of documents, you may need to include more than one table of contents. For instance, you might have a document that includes multiple chapters, and each chapter needs its own TOC. This tip explains how easy it is to create multiple tables of contents in your own documents.