Adding a table of contents section to your Microsoft Word documents will make it easier for the users to jump to desired sections quickly. They will not have to scroll down to the 110th page of your essay to reach a certain section or use the Word search feature. Especially if your documents are very large and contain hundreds of pages, it is a good idea to put a table of contents block at the top of the document listing all the important sections of the content. That’s what we are going to discuss today.
To Insert Table of Content in Word
- Move your cursor to the area where you want the Table of Content to be.
- Navigate to the References tab.
- Click on the Table of Contents icon.
- Choose the preferred format.
The table of contents section should now appear in the selected area of the document. If it isn’t working or not showing your headlines, you should make sure that the headings are actually formatted as headings. Just bolding the characters won’t make your headings appear in the table of contents section.
If you wish to change the formatting or configuration of the table of contents section in Word, you can just right-click on it and do your customizations.
While customizing the formatting of the headlines that should appear in the table of contents, you should make sure that you are changing the formatting in the headings section in Home > Styles. Modifying the headline formatting like the normal text isn’t recommended.
By default, the table of contents will show you 3 levels of the headlines the Heading 1, Heading 2, and Heading 3 (h1, h2, and h3 in web terms.) You may also customize that if you wish to.