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About this lesson

Learn to create an automated Table of Contents.

Exercise files

Download this lesson’s related exercise files.

Table of Contents
37 KB Table of Contents - Solution
39.6 KB

Quick reference

Table of Contents

A Table of Contents (TOC) is commonly used in large manuals, lengthy reports, or any time a page reference to topics is desired. It is good practice to create the TOC on its own page rather than embed it within text on a page.

Instructions

Rule #1:  The TOC will link to Heading Styles.

Rule #2:  Apply Heading Styles before creating the TOC.

Be aware of the 4 ribbons involved in making the TOC project run smoothly:

  1. Home ribbon, Styles group
  2. View ribbon, Navigation pane
  3. Insert ribbon, Page Number
  4. References Ribbon, Table of Contents
Apply the Heading Styles:
  • Select the “Topic text” to work with.
  • Click the Home ribbon and select Heading 1 in the Styles group.
  • Continue in that same fashion to apply Heading 1 to all the main topics.
  • Apply Heading 2 on the “Sub Topic text”; there are two instances of subtopics.
  • Apply Page Numbers
    • Insert Ribbon, Page Number, Bottom of Page, and choose any of the options you like.
  • Insert a Page Break after the Table of Contents title on page 1.
    • Click at the end of the “Table of Contents” title (This places the insertion point where the page break will occur.)
    • Press Ctrl + Enter, or click Page Layout, Breaks, “Page”
  • Create the Table of Contents on Page 1
    • Move your insertion point below the Table of Contents title on page 1
    • Click the References ribbon
    • Click Table of Contents
    • Choose the top Automatic Table 1

Check for accuracy by using the Navigation Pane options or pressing Ctrl + Click on any TOC entry to make sure it sends your insertion point to the matching location within the document.

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  • 00:04 Let's talk about Table of Contents also known as TOCs.
  • 00:08 Now the Table of Contents section is on the References ribbon,
  • 00:12 over on the left-hand side Table of Contents.
  • 00:15 When I put my mouse there, it actually tells you what it does.
  • 00:17 Provides an overview of your document by adding a table of contents.
  • 00:22 The text using a Heading Style is automatically included.
  • 00:25 Let's come over here to the Home ribbon under the Style section is a Gallery.
  • 00:29 We're going to be working with Heading 1 and Heading 2 today.
  • 00:34 Let's go ahead and start on this.
  • 00:36 All right, during this process we're going to use four ribbons.
  • 00:38 First of all, the View ribbon.
  • 00:40 On the View ribbon, we've got our Navigation pane already check marked.
  • 00:44 This time we're going to use headings.
  • 00:46 As we apply the Heading Styles,
  • 00:47 you'll see it build right over here on the left hand side.
  • 00:50 Next, the Home ribbon, the Home ribbon is where we apply the heading styles.
  • 00:54 They're also found on the right-click in the mini bar.
  • 00:57 And then the Insert ribbon to apply page numbers.
  • 00:59 And then the References ribbon to apply the TOC.
  • 01:01 Okay, let's get started.
  • 01:02 Number 1, in this document, each heading starting with a topic,
  • 01:06 we're going to apply Heading Style 1.
  • 01:08 Subtopics will be Heading Style 2.
  • 01:11 Okay, let's go ahead and do this one first.
  • 01:13 I'm going to find topic.
  • 01:14 Now I'm going to move my mouse over to the left hand side and select the entire line.
  • 01:18 I could go up to the Home ribbon, we've got Heading 1 right there.
  • 01:23 Let's do it again with the minibar.
  • 01:24 Flip my mouse to the left-hand side select the next topic.
  • 01:27 The minibar pops open, we've got Styles, and
  • 01:31 here we go the same gallery, Heading 1.
  • 01:34 Now let's do a subtopic.
  • 01:35 Clicking beside Rules > Styles > Heading 2.
  • 01:41 Well, this is going to be a lot of work and a lot of moving around.
  • 01:44 So we're going to be using the Format Painter right over here
  • 01:47 on the Home Ribbon Format Painter, that is also found on the right-click.
  • 01:51 So I'm going to select one more topic, I'm going to apply Heading Style 1.
  • 01:58 If I single-click the Format Painter, I can use it once.
  • 02:01 If I double-click it I can use as many times as I want till I'm done.
  • 02:04 This is a very fast way to apply this same heading on a bunch of lines.
  • 02:09 Double-click, click, click, there we go.
  • 02:12 Notice, on my mouse is a little tiny paintbrush,
  • 02:15 wherever I click, will apply that heading.
  • 02:19 Since a heading is a paragraph feature, I simply have to click the line.
  • 02:23 I don't have to select it, just click in that line click,
  • 02:26 it applies to the whole line.
  • 02:28 This is speedy, speedy way to do this, okay?
  • 02:31 Anything says topic, I'm just clicking once, applying that heading.
  • 02:37 Okay, now to stop it cause I'm done.
  • 02:39 I'm going to hit Escape, it will stop it.
  • 02:41 I could bring my mouse up here to the paintbrush and turn it off.
  • 02:44 Okay, Ctrl+Home, get back up to the top.
  • 02:46 Time to do the subtopic.
  • 02:48 Finding a subtopic, clicking into the line.
  • 02:52 I can go up to the Hallery > Heading 2, come over here to the Paintbrush,
  • 02:56 double-click.
  • 02:57 And now I'll just go through and find the subtopics.
  • 03:00 Click, and that is it.
  • 03:01 There was just one other.
  • 03:03 Hitting Escape to stop the paintbrush.
  • 03:05 Check out what happened on the Navigation pane.
  • 03:08 Even though they're left aligned on the document,
  • 03:11 we can show that they are indented over here on the Navigation pane,
  • 03:14 it'll look the same way on the table of contents.
  • 03:17 Right back up here to the top, that was step 1.
  • 03:21 Step 2, Insert page numbers, bottom of page.
  • 03:23 All right, that is on the Insert ribbon.
  • 03:26 Far right hand side Headers and
  • 03:28 Footers Group > Page Number > Bottom of Page > Plain Number 3.
  • 03:32 Notice, it popped up in the Footer section.
  • 03:35 To get out of that, I'm going to float my mouse into the document and double-click.
  • 03:38 Okay, page numbers are on, you can see on the bottom left-hand side Page 1 of 3.
  • 03:43 And those will show up on the table of contents.
  • 03:46 They don't show up on the Navigation pane.
  • 03:48 Item 3, insert a page break at the very top.
  • 03:51 That's where we want our table of contents to land.
  • 03:54 And then we're going to go to the References ribbon and
  • 03:57 insert the table of contents.
  • 03:59 The final step 5 will be done in the next lesson, okay?
  • 04:02 Up to the top,Ctrl+Home takes us to the top of our document.
  • 04:05 What do you really want the page break?
  • 04:07 Right, underneath the heading table of contents.
  • 04:11 I'll hit Enter once, and
  • 04:12 know from previous lessons that Ctrl+Enter will push in a page break.
  • 04:16 You could also go to Layout >Breaks > Page Break.
  • 04:20 There we go, it forced everything to the second page.
  • 04:23 Scrolling up to the top again, okay?
  • 04:26 And our step number 4 was the References ribbon > Table of Contents button.
  • 04:31 Here we have Automatic Table 1.
  • 04:33 In this case, table 1 heads up with the word contents.
  • 04:37 Automatic Table 2 heads it up with the words Table of Contents.
  • 04:41 Okay, we're going to just stick with this right now with the first one contents.
  • 04:46 Go ahead and click and scroll up to see the results.
  • 04:49 There you go.
  • 04:51 Is this correct?
  • 04:52 Page 2 begins my text and final page 4.
  • 04:55 Notice, I don't have any headings applied to page 1, so it didn't get a page 1.
  • 05:01 It only sees the headings that started on page 2 and further down.
  • 05:06 So yes, this is correct.
  • 05:07 Notice as I float my mouse,
  • 05:09 it's giving me a tooltip Ctrl+clicked follow a link, zooms me to that spot.
  • 05:14 So that is how you use the table contents after the fact.
  • 05:18 That's it for this lesson, join me in the next lesson and we will update this.

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