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Making a Table of Contents
It looks good to provide a table of contents especially when you prepare a
large document. It does not take long and the benefits make it well
worth doing.
If you are using Microsoft Word, or most other word-processing packages, it
is remarkably easy to get a professional-looking table which is generated for
you by the software. Not only will the table look good but the headings are
‘active’; so people reading the document on a computer can click on the TOC and
jump to the place in the text.
Creating a table of contents in a Microsoft Word document is a two-step
process – First tag the words for the headings and second, assemble the table.
The first step is to identify the text that you want to appear in the
Table of Contents (TOC). Using Word as an example, there are two ways to mark the headings
to include in your TOC.
You will notice that it is possible to define certain words as heading 1,
heading 2, heading 3 etc. So you just select/highlight the required text and define it
as having the relevant heading style (1, 2, 3 etc) by clicking on the relevant heading.
Many
layers of heading can be defined but 3 is a sensible structure with chapter,
section and subsection headings and this should be enough layers except in the
most obscure technical documents.
The second method is tag each entry that you want in your TOC. This inserts
a special marker and is
similar to the way you insert index entries. However, this method is not
explored here as method 1 is much simpler. However, the tagging method does
provide many more options.
| Inserting headings |
Just as you can highlight text and make it bold or italic,
you can also set the ‘style’. You can find the pre-defined styles beside the
font selector. You are probably using ‘Normal’ or ‘Text’ when typing.
But you can also select and apply the relevant heading required. So for a
chapter title, select heading 1 and continue through the document. Your
document will immediately look better organised.
Continue through the document and add the appropriate type of heading style
at a level that will be included in your TOC. Do a quick check at this stage and
compile a TOC which will give you confidence and let you see how your choice of
heading looks. (There is a temptation to overdo it and add too many headings
since the software makes it so easy!).
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| Setting the style |
If you don't like the particular style for a heading it is possible to change
it:
Under format select ‘style’.
Then change the font, effects, and spacing required before and after.
Before you click OK, you will notice that there is a checkbox to say
‘update automatically’. If you tick this box, the new style will appear
throughout the document for that style.
So you can set the headings and adjust the way they look at any stage.
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| One word of warning: |
Make sure that you have set the basic style for the whole document first. If
you have imported any text, from the web for example, it might have brought new
styles with it which will ‘emerge’ from time to time as you edit the document.
So it might make sense to highlight the whole document and set it to ‘normal’
before you start - but this will get rid of indents and bullet points plus other
effects you have already applied. However, think of this as the final
read-through of your document and give it a final polish. So put in all the
styles and layout as a proofing process, and make sure the styles are consistent
and set the headings at the same time.
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Other tips
 | You can assemble a TOC whenever you want. To actually compile a TOC, go to the top of the document by moving the cursor/insert
point to the beginning of the text as that is where the table is inserted. Then
click the Insert tab and select ‘Index and Tables’. Next, select the ‘Contents’
tab and make the table – you can experiment with the formats and layouts as you
go as it takes just a few moments to make the TOC. |
| Tables of Contents do not update automatically. To update a Table of
Contents, put your cursor within the generated Table of Contents (which
turns grey when you click in the TOC field) and press ctrl-alt F9 to update
all fields in the document and choose to update the Entire Table. |
| A Table of Contents is a 'field', not ordinary text. If you click on any
part of the generated table, it will show the TOC with a grey background.
|
| To make changes to your Table of Contents, click within the TOC to update
the existing Table of Contents, rather than creating a new one. The system
will create a new, duplicate TOC if you tell it to, but updating makes more
sense. |
| To make sure that Word updates the Table of Contents field whenever you
print your document, select Tools > Options > Print and tick the Update
Fields box. |
Working with many small documents
| It is good practice to work on small documents (under 50 pages). It can be
clumsy and slow to try to edit a book-sized document that has 200 or 300 pages
and most writers prefer to work in chapters. Facilities are provided to allow a
table of contents to be assembled from separate chapter-files. So there is no
need to gather all the files into one large document in order to make a TOC
(Sadly, this same logic does not apply to the compiling of an index where you
have to work with a single document). |
| To create one table of contents from several documents, you need to do the
following: |
- The first stage is to move all the files into a single directory/folder
if you haven't already done so. Try calling the folder something like
‘version 1’ and copy the chapter-files into this folder. This is not vital
but things are easier, and work more reliably, if you organise yourself this
way.
- Create a separate document to hold the table of contents – Give it a
simple name like ‘Table of Contents. This is a new document in the new
folder you have just created.
- Then open this new, blank document and start to link to all the different
files in the correct order.
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Use the RD (Reference Document) field for each document that you want to
include in your Table of Contents. This tells the software which files you
want to be assembled into a table of contents. |
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To insert an RD field, press Ctrl-F9 and Word gives you some curly
brackets. Now type RD "filename" so it might look like this { RD
"Chapter 1.doc" }. You can't type the curly brackets by hand. You must do
ctrl-F9. Copy and paste will also not work for this type of field. Just
remember, this is a ‘field’ and not normal text. You can try double backslashes if it is not possible to have all the
files together. E.g. { RD "C:\\directory\\Chapter 1.doc" }.
|
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Insert an RD field for each document, and in the correct order. |
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Create the Table of Contents in the usual way. |
- Having assembled all the documents in your table of contents file, compile
the TOC and you can check that all the documents are there. The software will
warn you if any references missing or if it cannot access them. This ‘test run’
gives you the number of pages in each section. But you will also spot that each
file is numbered starting from page 1.
- You now need to do some maths and work out the running total i.e. work out
the start page number for each section. You then need to open each document and
under the ‘View’ option click on ‘header and footer’. This allows you to insert
the start page number. Each of the component files has to be opened and the
start page set. Save and close these files. Then return to the table of contents
file again and create a TOC. In a few moments you will have the table of
contents refreshed.
| Setting page numbers |
The Table of Contents will pick up the page number that appears in each
document. If you are compiling your TOC from many documents, you have to set the
starting page number in each document manually for the pagination to run
consecutively through your work. (Otherwise each chapter in your TOC re-starts
from page 1).
|
| Another word of advice |
You could try making one big document but keeping them separate,
small documents is normally the recommended option. You will need to adjust all the start pages
if you do some significant editing after you set the page numbers. So making the
final TOC is something you should only do
when you have finished the editing as you do not want to repeat to process. |
The TOC ‘document’ that is not a document but a ‘field’.
The TOC ‘document’ that is produced when you create a table of contents is
not a document in the sense that you might normally understand. Word refers to
it as a ‘field’: So this ‘document’ can be printed out but you cannot edit a
generated TOC.
Instead, copy and paste if you are intending to do any post-editing on this
page. Paste the TOC 'image' into a new document using ‘paste special’ and paste
as text only. Save this as ‘TOC edited’ or something similar. But, before you
decide to do any editing, explore all the styles offered by the software, as
there should be one style that is ideal for you.
Another very significant advantage of inserting the TOC
Apart from looking professional, the TOC/heading pointers become 'active' if you
want to convert your document into a PDF document. When using Open Office or
Acrobat Professional, the contents pages will be generate - plus the software
will create an internal link. This means that if you click on the TOC entry, you will
jump straight to the relevant entry without doing any extra work. (This also works if
it stays as a Word doc and you create a TOC with headings).
So the discipline of using the embedded styles for the headings has several
rewards and is well worth the little effort required in the long run.
Making the most of MS 'Word'
Word® is a product name
registered my Microsoft.
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