Creating a Table of Contents

A table of contents is crucial when you are creating a document that people need to navigate easily. Word creates the table of contents based on the headings you ve entered in the document that use (or are based on) the default heading styles. To create a table of contents, follow these steps:

1. Position the cursor at the point in the document at which you want to create the table of contents.

2. Choose Reference from the Insert menu; then choose Index And Tables from the submenu.

3. In the Index And Tables dialog box, select the Table Of Contents tab.

4. Review the format settings (the page numbers are right-aligned, with a dot tab leader). Change the settings to fit the needs of your project.

5. Click OK to generate the table of contents. The table is placed at the cursor position in your document.

If you change the headings later, you can easily update the table of contents by clicking in the table and pressing F9. A dialog box will appear, asking whether you want to update the page numbers only, or the entire table. To make sure that you ve got the most up-to-date TOC possible, select Update Entire Table and click OK.