Monthly Archives: March 2013

Updating and Formatting Table of Contents

Updating Table of Contents

After creating a Table of Contents if you had made changes to the document and wish to update the Table of Contents accordingly, do the following:

  1.  Right-click on the Table of Contents
  2. From the right-click menu, click Update Field. Update Table of Contents dialog box appears.
  3. Select the option Update Entire Table
  4. Click OK.

See below image:

update table of content

Formatting Table of Contents

You can modify the appearance of a Table of Contents by formatting the text in the table of contents.

    1. View the default styles for each heading level in the Styles gallery. To open the Styles gallery widget, click Alt+O+S. See below image:

format table of cotents1

  1. Click the down arrow button next to a style in the gallery, click Modify. Modify Style dialog box appears.
  2. In the Modify Style dialog box, you can modify properties such as font, paragraph, tabs, border, for each heading level in the Table of Contents.

See below image:

format table of cotents2

How to create a Table of Content automatically in Word

Creating a table of content automatically in Word involves the following two steps:

Step 1:

1.    Identify the texts in your document that you intend to highlight as headings and then apply appropriate heading styles from the Styles gallery.

For example, to apply  first level heading, select the text in your document and then click style Heading 1 from the Styles gallery. See below:

table of content1

(To learn more on how to create and apply multilevel heading styles in your document, read the following post:

https://wordknowhow.wordpress.com/2013/01/30/how-to-use-multilevel-numbered-headings-in-the-word/)

Step 2:

Once you are done applying  heading styles to all the heading levels in your document, place the mouse cursor where you want to generate the table of content.

Click the Reference tab from the Ribbon and then under group Table of Contents, click the icon Table of Contents. From the bottom  of the drop-down list, click Insert Table of Contents .  See below image:

table of content2

On clicking Insert Table of Contents, the dialog box Table of Contents appears. Now, do the following in the dialog box:

  1. Select a Tab Leader type from the drop-down list.
  2. Select a format for the table of content from the drop-down list Formats.
  3. Select the number of heading levels to be included in the table of contents from the Show Levels spin box.
  4. Click the Options button from the right bottom corner to include/exclude heading styles to build a customized table of content.

See below image:

table of content3

Click OK. Table of Content is generated in the cursor position.

( To learn more about how to update and format a Table of Contents in Word read the following article:

https://wordknowhow.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/updating-and-formatting-table-of-contents/ )