How to Create a Table of Contents for a Word Document

Last Updated: July 18, 2022

There are a few simple steps to creating your automated table of contents on a word document. It's a lot easier than you think and will save time and effort. Also, you can control click the table to get straight to a particular section.

1

Click the desired location in your document.

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You'll usually want to add a table of contents to the top of the document, but it can be anywhere you'd like. ^{[1]
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2

Click the "References" tab.

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New options will appear on the toolbar. ^{[2]
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3

Click the "Table of Contents" icon.

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A list of table options will expand.

4

Select a style.

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This adds the table of contents to your document.

5

Add styles to your document.

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The Table of Contents is built automatically based on your heading styles. To make sure a page or section is added to your table of contents, you'll need to assign its heading a style.
- Highlight a page heading. A context menu will expand automatically.
- Click Styles on the context menu.
- Select Heading 1 .
- Repeat for all major pages in your document.
- For minor pages and sections, select those headings and assign them Heading 2 . Heading 2 entries will appear as sub-sections of Heading 1 entries in your ToC.
- You can also assign additional minor sections as Heading 3 , which will appear as subsections to Heading 2s in the ToC.

6

Update the table of contents.

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The table of contents will update instantly to display the page numbers for each section.

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Question

How do I remove 'read only' from a Word document?

Crazyperson2002

Community Answer

To remove 'read only', there should be a button at the top of the document, or you could save a different copy and edit it from there.

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Remember to update the table or else it will stay blank!

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How to Create a Table of Contents for a Word Document

Steps

Click the desired location in your document.

Click the "References" tab.

Click the "Table of Contents" icon.

Select a style.

Add styles to your document.

Update the table of contents.

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