Creating Table of Contents with Ease Using Microsoft Word

We have all read books that include a page or two before the start with the names of the chapter and their page numbers. This section is called Table of Contents or TOC, and you can replicate it on Microsoft Word.

Imagine you have a really big document with hundreds of pages. It could be a large business report or a book. Navigating the document will be challenging and time-consuming without a roadmap. The table of contents acts as a roadmap to the content, and since we are dealing with digital documents, you can click a chapter and instantly go there. 

Now, you have two options:

1. Prepare the table of contents manually, which will take a long time, or
2. Take a shortcut by using Word’s built-in feature to create one automatically

How to Create Table of Contents with Microsoft Word

Below, you can see a Word Document we have prepared for this example. 

Figure 1: Word document

Now, creating a Table of Contents (TOC) here is simple. Follow these steps:

1. Click on the “References” tab on the top ribbon. On the far left side of the ribbon, you can now see a drop-down menu called “Table of Contents”.

Figure 2: References on Word’s Ribbon

1. Click on “Table of Contents”. You can see Word has a few built-in TOC, including two automatic tables and one manual table. 

Figure 3: Types of TOC in Microsoft Word

1. Pick any of the automatic tables. And voila! Wait what?

Figure 4: Error in Creating TOC

Why isn’t it working? Well, as you can see from the pop-up, you have to apply heading styles to chapter names for the automatic TOC to work. Otherwise, how will Word figure out which part of the document is actually the title of a specific section? 

So far, you have learned how to use the Table of Contents feature of the ribbon. Now, we will describe how to actually make it work with Microsoft Word.

Applying Heading Styles

Your document needs to be formatted properly with heading styles for the automatic table of contents to work in Microsoft Word. Automatic tables present the text that are in the following styles:

• Heading 1
• Heading 2 
• Heading 3

As a result, you want your chapter names and sub-sections to be in heading styles for them to appear on the table of contents. Here is how you can apply the heading style to your document:

1. Select “Home” on the top ribbon.

Figure 5: Home on Word’s Ribbon

1. Select the text/paragraph to which you want to apply a heading style.

Figure 6: Selecting text to apply Heading Style

1. From the Styles section of the ribbon, pick the heading option you want.

Figure 7: Selecting the heading styles from the ribbon

It’s as simple as that! Now, do it for all the chapter titles of your document. You can apply Heading 1 as the style for chapter titles. For sub-sections of the chapter, you can select Heading 2 or Heading 3. After doing this, your document may look like this:

Figure 8: Word document with proper heading styles

Now that your document includes the proper heading styles, you can use Word’s automatic table of contents feature. Similar to before, head over to “References” and select one of the automatic tables from “Tables of Contents”. It should look similar to Figure 9 below.

Figure 9: Word document with Tables of Contents

How to Update Table of Contents in MS Word

If you made changes to your document, then you will have to update your table of contents to match whatever’s written down. This is pretty easy. All you have to do is click on the table of contents and select “Update Table”. 

Figure 10: Updating Table of Contents

Select what you want to update on the pop-up below. You can either update the page numbers or the entire table. It’s always better to update the entire table as it will not only update the page numbers but also make changes to the text if you have modified the headings. 

Figure 11: Selecting the form of update

As you can see, creating a Table of Contents section on your Microsoft Word is pretty easy. All you have to do is use appropriate headings and then use an automatic table from the References tab. There are more complex ways to prepare a Table of Contents and customise it. If you want to know more, check out the Microsoft Word courses available on Sikkhon.