To this day, we often encounter cases (especially when printing a thesis) where the table of contents in Word is not automatically created by our customers using the word processor. For this reason, the page numbers are often not aligned or if changes are made to the text, the table of contents has to be re-edited.

Fortunately, in Microsoft Office Word, the program used by many people, it is easy to set up automatic table of contents creation in a few simple steps, which we will demonstrate in this article.

Create a table of contents in Word

Insert a table of contents

Word uses the style elements of the initial menu bar for the automatic table of contents. If you have already used the style of heading 1, heading 2 and the other headings to format your document, you are ready to insert the table of contents. If you haven’t already, I explain how to use it in detail below

To insert a table of contents, follow the steps below:

• Click on the point in the document where you want to create the table of contents. If you want it to appear on a separate page, insert a page break (Ctrl + Enter) before and after inserting the content.
• Click on the Links tab, then click on Contents in the Table of Contents group.

In the pop-up menu, select the style of the table of contents you want to insert.

• Table 1 creates an automatic table of contents.
• Table 2 also creates the Table of Contents title.
• Version 3 must be filled in manually.

When clicked, Word creates a table of contents from the document text, sorted by one of the first three heading styles: heading 1, heading 2 and heading 3.

You can check right away that everything is OK: hold down the Ctrl key and click on one of the page numbers. The program will then jump to the page number you clicked on.

Did you use style formatting in your document?

If you have not formatted the headings in the document with styles, you will need to do this before inserting the table of contents. Select a heading and click on Heading 1 style in the Styles group on the Home tab of the top menu bar.

Unfortunately, the headline style changes the formatting of the text, which can be easily changed by:

Right-click on the Address bar style you want to change, then click on Modify….. In the window that appears, you can format the selected Address bar style

When you have finished with all the first level chapter headings, you can select second level chapter headings and apply the Heading 2 header style, and so on. Once you are done with all the heading styles, click on the References tab and insert the table of contents as described above.

Updating the table of contents

Later, if you make changes to the document, page numbers and chapter titles may change, which will not be automatically updated in the table of contents! To update the table of contents, right-click on the table and select Update field, or select the Update button in the Table of Contents group on the References tab of the top menu bar. Select whether you want to update the entire table or just the page number and click OK to update the table of contents.

A word of advice: update the table of contents before printing or sharing a document if the document has changed since the last update.

No need to wait until the document is ready to insert a table of contents.

If you’re creating a long document, it’s a good idea to insert it at the beginning so you can easily navigate through it while you work. You can do this easily using the Navigation window in the View tab, where your table of contents will appear.

The table of contents menu is cross-referenced, so it works on your own computer if you have the table of contents and the text in a separate file. On another machine, however, the table of contents will “not find” the assigned chapter titles, and will write an error message in every line!

We hope this description will help many of you to create your table of contents, and if you would like to print it out, we will be happy to help you: see the link below for details: Print, copy

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