With your heading styles all applied, click on the References tab and insert your table of contents. Select all the second-level headings and apply the Heading 2 style, and so on. If the headings in your document aren’t formatted with styles, before inserting your table of contents, select each of the top-level headings for your ToC and apply the Heading 1 style from the Styles group on the Home tab of the ribbon. When people reading your document on-screen hover over a page number, they’ll be reminded that they can use the ToC for navigation. Hold Ctrl and click on one of the page numbers to navigate to that location in the document. The ToC will include a string of dots called a leader between the heading text and the page number for each heading. Word will create a ToC from the document text you styled with one of the first three heading styles: Heading 1, Heading 2, and Heading 3. Automatic Table 2 creates a ToC titled Table of Contents. Automatic Table 1 creates a ToC titled Contents. Choose the style of Table of Contents you wish to insert.In the Table of Contents group, click Table of Contents. If you’d like it to appear on its own page, insert a page break (Ctrl+Enter) before and after inserting the ToC. Click in your document where you want to create the table of contents.Follow these steps to insert a table of contents: If you already used the Heading 1, Heading 2, and other heading styles to format your document, you’re ready to insert your ToC. In Word, tables of contents rely on your use of styles to format headings.
In this article I’ll show you how to create a table of contents (ToC) in Word 2013-but you’ll use the same process to create one in Word 2010, Word 2007 and Word 2011 for the Mac.
They give printed documents a sophisticated look and feel, and add ebook-like navigation to onscreen documents.īut did you know that tables of contents are wicked easy to create and update in Microsoft Word? I created the following table of contents with just three clicks-and so can you. If you edited the name of the heading, you’ll see that change take place both on the Ribbon and in the Styles menu.You already know that a table of contents makes it easier for your readers to work with long documents of 10 or more pages. Once you’ve made your choices, select “OK” to apply the modifications.
If you want to learn more about how styles work, check out our guide to mastering styles and themes. If you’re unsure about any of these options, we recommend leaving them at their default settings. Since the template your document is based on is likely Word’s main normal.dot template, choosing this option usually means changes will apply to all your documents. You can also choose whether the style changes you’re making should apply only to the current document or should apply to new documents based on this template.
The next bit in the Modify Style window lets you choose whether to add the style to the Styles gallery and whether to automatically update the style if you make manual adjustments to a paragraph in your document that uses that style (we don’t generally recommend using that option because it always leaves people wondering how their style got changed).
In the “Properties” section, you can rename the style, select the “Style Type” (only available for certain headings), base the style you’re editing off of another style, and even change the style for the paragraph that follows the heading. Whether you started modifying a style from the Ribbon or the Styles window, the “Modify Style” window opens up, and the rest of the process is the same. Right-click any of them and then choose “Modify” to start customizing the style. The Styles window will now show all nine heading levels. In the Style Pane Options window that opens, open the “Select styles to show” drop-down, change it from “Recommended” to “All Styles,” and then hit “OK.”