Word's basic table of contents may not always suffice for what you need as you create your documents. Fortunately, there are many variations you can apply. The following articles discuss specialized tables of contents and how to efficiently format them.

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

The following articles are available for the 'Tables 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 are some ideas.

   Creating a Custom TOC that Includes Portions of Paragraphs
Word provides a number of tools that can help you create custom tables of contents. This tip looks at a way you can include special text phrases in your 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 Table of Contents Involving Multiple Documents
Word can handle very large documents, but some people find it preferable to break large documents into multiple documents. (For instance, a book might be broken down into documents for each chapter.) At some point you may want to create a TOC for those multiple documents. This tip discusses three possible approaches to the task.

   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.

   Headings in Tables Not Showing in TOC
Word includes a couple of built-in tools that rely upon the use of heading styles in your document. These tools include tables of contents and the Navigation pane. When all your headings don't show up in one or both of these, it can be bothersome.

   Hyperlinks from Headings to the TOC
A table of contents is a great way to help organize lengthy documents. In a default TOC, you can use each entry as a hyperlink to the headings in the document. Getting back to the TOC, though, can take a bit of work.

   Incomplete Table of Contents
Word allows you to easily add a table of contents to your documents. If you find that some of your document headings don't show up in your table of contents, then the ideas presented in this tip will be helpful.

   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.

   Jumping Back to the TOC
Word allows you to create a table of contents that provides hyperlinks to headings within your document. It doesn't make it that easy to get back to the TOC after clicking on a TOC entry, however. Here are some ideas on how you can work around this apparent shortcoming.

   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.

   Mixed Page Number Formats in a TOC
When you create a Table of Contents for a document that contains multiple sections, the page numbers in that TOC should reflect whatever numbering format you used for your page numbers. This tip details some things you can check if your numbering isn't behaving.

   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.

   Paragraph Numbers instead of Page Numbers in a TOC
Word is great at creating a simple, straightforward table of contents. If you want a more non-traditional TOC, however, it can get a bit trickier. Here are some ideas on creating one such non-traditional TOC.

   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.

   Stopping the TOC from Appearing in the Navigation Pane
When you create a TOC for your document, the information in the TOC is based on the headings in your document. If you don't want the TOC information to appear in the Navigation pane, there are two approaches you can take, as described in this tip.

   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.

   Tracking Down Phantom TOC Entries
If formatting of your text isn't done correctly, it can lead to some weird results in a TOC generated by Word. This tip looks at possible reasons why a TOC may have unwanted blank entries in it.

   Two Types of Page Numbers in a TOC
Word, when creating a table of contents, should automatically make sure that the page numbers it shows correspond to the way those page numbers appear in your headers and footers. Here's what to do if the page numbers don't appear the way you expect.

   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 Table of Contents
A Table of Contents is a valuable addition to some types of documents. Updating a TOC is easy, but doing so always displays a dialog box that could be irritating. If you are irritated by the dialog box, the best solution is to bypass it entirely using a macro, as described in this tip.

   Updating an Entire TOC from a Macro
The TOC (Table of Contents) is generated by a field. This field may be updated in a macro using a single command line.

   Using Dot Leaders in Special Tables
Adding dot leaders before page numbers in a table of contents or table of authorities can make the finished table look professional. Here's how to make sure that your special tables have the dot leaders you desire.

   Using Multiple Tables of Contents
Adding multiple tables of contents is a must for some types of document design. Here's a great overview of how you can add all the tables you need.