Fortunately, Word allows you to insert a table of contents, making it easy to organize and navigate your document. A table of contents is just like the list of chapters at the beginning of a book. It lists each section in the document and the page number where that section begins. A working table of contents allows readers to go directly to chapters or sections by clicking links in the table of contents (TOC). This feature is so important to Kindle customers that Amazon requires all Kindle eBooks with chapters or sections to have a working TOC.
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You can let Word 2010 create a table of contents (TOC) for your document. You don’t need to manually type a TOC. As long as you use the built-in heading styles, Word can slap down a custom TOC in your document:
1Create a separate page for the TOC by pressing Ctrl +Enter to insert a page break.
You can also insert a page break by selecting the Page Break command from the Pages group on the Insert tab.
2Click the mouse to place the insertion pointer on the new, blank page.
The TOC is inserted at that point.
3Click the References tab and, in the Table of Contents group, click the Table of Contents button.
The Table of Contents menu appears.
4Choose an item from the menu based on what you want the table of contents to look like.
Word bases the TOC on text formatted with the Heading styles in your document. As long as you use Heading 1 for main heads, Heading 2 for subheads, and Heading 3 (and so on) for lower-level heads and titles, the TOC will be spot-on.
5If you need to update a TOC, click the mouse in the TOC and choose the Update Table command from the top of the TOC list.
If your document’s contents change, you can change the TOC to match.
In Office 2011 for Mac, Word features a fast, new way to make a Table of Contents (TOC). If you’ve been using Heading styles throughout your document, the process is entirely automatic. Choose to make a Table of Contents automatically; otherwise, select the Manual Formatting option.
Follow these steps to make a TOC:
Click in the document where you want the TOC to appear.
In the Document Elements tab of the Ribbon, look in the Table of Contents group and click the tab at the bottom-center of the gallery.
Choose a TOC style from the Automatic Table of Contents group in the gallery.
* Choose Heading Styles if your document contains Heading styles.
* Choose Manual if your document does not contain Heading styles.
If you choose an Automatic option, based on the heading styles you used in the document, Word creates a quick TOC for you! If you choose the Manual option, Word guesses at your document’s structure and presents you with a generic TOC based on your format choice from the gallery that you can customize manually.
How fast and easy is that? As long as your document is well-structured based on Heading styles, Word’s TOC feature saves you a ton of work. But what if you want more TOC style choices? No problem! Select the entire TOC that you put into your document. In Word, choose Insert→Index and Tables, and then select the Table of Contents tab in the Index and Tables dialog that appears.
Here you can choose from additional formatting options:
Formats: Shows built-in and your own custom TOC format styles.
Show Levels: Sets how many heading levels will be used in the TOC.
Show Page Numbers: This check box shows or hides page numbers.
Right Align Page Numbers: This check box aligns page numbers left or right.
Tab Leader: This pop-up menu offers more choices for the type of leader line that will be inserted between headings and page numbers.
Options button: This button opens the Table of Contents Options dialog.
With the Table of Contents dialog, you can manually map styles to TOC levels by typing in TOC level values in the fields to the right of the Available Styles list. You can determine which styles to make available:
Styles: Selecting this box allows you to choose from TOC styles from Normal.dotm and other open templates.
Table Entry Fields: Select this box to allow mapping of TOC Word field codes in your document to TOC levels in a TOC.
Modify:Available if you choose From Template in the Styles list.