Mark Entry for Table of Contents

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About this lesson

Learn to create an advanced level TOC using “Mark Entry”.

Lesson versions

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2013, 2016, 2019/365.

Exercise files

Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ Word documents from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.

Mark Entry for Table of Contents.docx
183.4 KB Mark Entry for Table of Contents - Solution.docx
180.6 KB

Quick reference

Mark Entry for Table of Contents

Learn to create an advanced level Table of Contents (TOC) using “Mark Entry”

When to use

When a document’s text style and TOC has to stay in normal font format, instead of Heading Style format, use the “Mark Entry” feature to help the TOC to find the headings. This is an advanced feature and generally used in legal offices where fancy formats are not acceptable.

Instructions

  1. Establish the text of the document. (Get as much typing and pictures in place as possible.)
  1. Mark the TOC Entries within the entire document (Alt+Shift+O)
    Ex:  Select script to use as Heading, press Alt+Shift+O, choose the outline Level 1, 2, or 3, click Mark
  2. Be aware of the formatting in the TOC marks.  If it’s bold in there, it will be bold on the TOC.
    Go through and un-bold the words in the codes if you don’t want any bold in your TOC.
  1. When done, Close the mark entry  box.
  1. Go to the top of the Document (Ctrl+Home), place the insertion point where you want the TOC to appear.
  1. Click the REFERENCES ribbon,
    Click Table of Contents
    Custom Table of Contents
    Click Options
     
  2. Un-Check “Styles”  and check “Table Entry Fields”

  1. Click OK, OK
  1. At this point, if you move a section, you must update the fields
    Update Fields (F9),
    or Right click, Update fields, Entire Table
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  • 00:04 All right, in this lesson we're gonna do and
  • 00:07 advance table of contents by marking the entries manually.
  • 00:10 Sometimes when a document's text style and table of contents has to stay in
  • 00:14 normal font format, like legal documents or court documents,
  • 00:19 then instead of using the heading style formats that we used previously,
  • 00:23 we're gonna use the mark entry feature.
  • 00:25 So go ahead and open up the exercise file, because the text is already established,
  • 00:31 and everything that's red in here will become one of our marked entries.
  • 00:34 When you go ahead and select the first Topic 1,
  • 00:37 I've got a little tooltip up here that says Alt+Shift+O.
  • 00:42 When I press Alt+Shift+O, it opens up the Mark Entry Table of Contents box.
  • 00:48 Now this will stay open during this whole process, which is very nice, so
  • 00:51 that it doesn't go away.
  • 00:52 And since I already had that text selected, it went ahead and entered it for
  • 00:57 me on this top line.
  • 00:58 The Table Identifier is C, that stands for
  • 01:00 table of contents, and the Level is simply the outline level.
  • 01:04 I want this as Level 1 on my Table of Contents outline.
  • 01:08 So I'm gonna and click on Mark, and you're gonna see a big change on the screen.
  • 01:12 So click Mark, and all seven of these codes showed up right here.
  • 01:16 And all these paragraph marks showed up.
  • 01:18 Well, if you take a look on your home ribbon,
  • 01:20 this Show/Hide button, this was not turned on a moment ago.
  • 01:24 The minute I clicked Mark on that box, it turned on these codes,
  • 01:27 cuz it wants to show you what these codes are.
  • 01:29 And this simply reads table of contents entry, Topic 1, and
  • 01:32 then the field code is table of contents, field code.
  • 01:35 And that's actually a tiny L there, for level one.
  • 01:39 That's all that that code means.
  • 01:42 All right, lets go ahead and do the next one.
  • 01:43 Select Topic 2, bold font.
  • 01:46 Click on the Table of Contents Entry box.
  • 01:48 This time we're gonna alter this.
  • 01:50 I'm gonna actually remove the words Bold font out of this.
  • 01:52 So you can get very picky with what shows up in that table of contents
  • 01:56 by editing while you're building, and marking your entries.
  • 02:00 In this case, I'm gonna leave that as table of contents outline level one and
  • 02:04 go ahead and click on Mark.
  • 02:06 It always pushes those words to the top of the screen, so I want to point out that I
  • 02:09 have red words within the paragraph, you can have table of content entries show up,
  • 02:15 even though they're not true headings within your document.
  • 02:18 So you can get very particular about what shows up in your table of contents.
  • 02:22 So I highlighted those words, activate table of contents.
  • 02:25 I'm going to make this heading Level 3, and Mark.
  • 02:30 And move this out of the way.
  • 02:31 I'm gonna continue on now.
  • 02:32 Sub Topic is going to be heading level 2, and Mark.
  • 02:37 And Topic 3 is going to be heading level 1, and Mark.
  • 02:42 And this time, again, words inside of my paragraph,
  • 02:46 I'm gonna make that heading level outline 3 and Mark.
  • 02:50 Now notice something that isn't happening on our screen.
  • 02:53 So take a look at the navigation pane over here on the left.
  • 02:56 Notice the headings aren't showing up.
  • 02:58 Because the navigation pane only recognizes these styles
  • 03:02 up here as headings, not marked entries.
  • 03:05 So keep that in mind and
  • 03:06 don't worry about it if they're not showing up on your navigation pane.
  • 03:09 All right, at this point, I think we've got everything marked,
  • 03:12 we're gonna go ahead and go way up to the top.
  • 03:14 We're gonna make our table of contents right here.
  • 03:17 I'm done working with this Contents Entry box, so I'm going to close that.
  • 03:21 Right here in contents, I'm gonna go to my References ribbon
  • 03:26 > Table of Contents, and I'm gonna ignore all these automated ones.
  • 03:30 Gonna come down here to Custom Table of Contents.
  • 03:34 When I click that, now it defaults to this Table of Contents.
  • 03:38 Here's the heading levels I was talking about.
  • 03:40 Outline level 1, 2, and 3.
  • 03:42 That's what we set up in there.
  • 03:44 But notice I didn't use headings.
  • 03:46 I didn't use the styles it's looking for.
  • 03:49 Buried behind this little button right here,
  • 03:50 this Options button, are all the details you need.
  • 03:54 So click on that Options, and here we have Table entry fields, this little, tiny box.
  • 03:59 If you don't click that box,
  • 04:00 you won't see your table of contents when using marked entries.
  • 04:04 Now, up here it has styles.
  • 04:06 I didn't use styles.
  • 04:07 But just to make sure none of them appear in case they're in my document,
  • 04:11 I'm gonna uncheck that for good measure, just to make sure none appear.
  • 04:15 I'll go ahead and leave my Outline levels, Table entry fields, hit OK,
  • 04:18 hit OK again, and you should see a table of contents right here.
  • 04:22 Now of course, look what happened, let me temporarily get rid of this box.
  • 04:26 My Topic 2 is bold.
  • 04:28 Well, I can, when I float my mouse over it, it says Ctrl+click.
  • 04:32 So I'll click to go to that area and
  • 04:34 alls I have to do is in this marked entry, I'm just gonna highlight that.
  • 04:39 My minibar comes up, I can unbold it right here, or
  • 04:42 I can unbold it on my Home ribbon.
  • 04:44 I'll just hit the Bold button right here to make it not bold.
  • 04:47 I'm going to leave the heading itself bold on the screen,
  • 04:50 but in my table of contents I don't want it to be bold.
  • 04:53 So come right back up to your table of contents.
  • 04:55 When we click inside here, I can come up here to my References and
  • 05:00 I can click Update Table, I could also do a right-click on the grayed area
  • 05:04 on my screen, and I can choose Update Table as well, Update Field.
  • 05:09 So the Update entire table, always go for that one, I strongly recommend that one.
  • 05:14 Hit OK, and there you go, it's no longer bold.
  • 05:18 And that is how you create a table of contents using marked entries
  • 05:22 where you are the one in charge of making sure everything is listed.

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