To create a table of contents for report in Word
[Based on Macintosh Word 2011]
Here is one method. If this process threatens to become time consuming, stop and ask the
publications director for assistance.
Format the headings and subheads using the style sheets in Word (if you don’t like how these look,
change them in the style sheet; you can ask the publications director how and/or refer to the
handout To Access or Change a Style Sheet-- it’s easy and fun). Don’t reformat each heading
separately.
Go to Home tab’s Styles section. On the right, click on tiny box with paragraph symbol (¶) to open
Styles pane. go to bottom of Styles pane and make sure List: All Styles are showing. (To list only the
styles that are in use, change to List: Styles in Use or List: in Current Document.)
Use Heading 1 for the main category that should show up in the Table of Contents, the
equivalent of Roman numeral I in an outline. Use this same heading for Works Cited and
appendixes.
Use Heading 2 for the secondary category that should show up in the Table of Contents, the
equivalent of a Capital A or B in an outline. The authors decide whether they want this secondary
category to appear in Table of Contents.
On the Table of Contents page, format the text “Table of Contents” so it looks the same as Heading
1, but DO NOT apply the Heading 1 style. If you do, “Table of Contents” will appear in the Table
of Contents, which is way too circular and self-referential.
1.
2.
3.
4.
Once the headings are formatted, click where you want to insert the table of contents.
In the Insert menu, pull down to Index and Tables
Click Table of Contents.
The number after Show levels refers to how many levels of headings to include – a 3 means
Headings 1, 2 and 3 will be included.
5. Check Show page numbers, Right align page numbers. Tab leader should be periods.
6. Click OK.
If a co-author created a style that should be included as Heading and you don’t want to reapply the
styles, you can add it to the table of contents:
7. Before clicking OK in step 6 above, click Options.
8. Under Available styles, find the style your co-author applied to headings in your document.
9. Under TOC level, to the right of the style name, enter a number from 1 to 9 to indicate the
level that heading style should represent. Heading 1 would be 1.
10. Click OK.
11. Click OK.
To change the appearance of TOC 1 and TOC 2, you MUST change the style sheets, or the
formatting will be lost when the table of contents is updated. Open the style sheets by going to
Home tab’s Styles section. On the right, click on tiny box with paragraph symbol. Local TOC 1, etc.
and make any changes that might be needed – although the Macintosh versions seems to not be as
poorly designed as the Windows version of Word 2007.
Updating the table of contents
Note that after editing the document, the table of contents needs to be updated for the changes to
take hold. Do not edit the actual list of figures and tables. Instead, edit the headers in the body of
the report. To update the table of contents:
1. Click in white space to left of table of contents, which should turn gray.
2. Right click and select Update field.
3. Select whether you want to update just the page numbers or all of the text.
Choose the latter if the header text has been changed. Click OK.
Remember, if this process threatens to become time consuming, stop and ask the publications
director for assistance.