How to Create a Table of Contents for a Word Document

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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    Choose where you'd like to place your ToC. 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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    You'll see the References tab at the top of Word. New options will appear on the toolbar.[2]
3

Click the "Table of Contents" icon.

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    You'll see Table of Contents at the top-left corner in the toolbar. A list of table options will expand.
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4

Select a style.

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    Click one of the automatic styles for your table. 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.
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6

Update the table of contents.

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    Once you've assigned styles to your headings, right-click the table and choose Update Field. The table of contents will update instantly to display the page numbers for each section.

Community Q&A

  • Question
    How do I remove 'read only' from a Word document?
    Crazyperson2002
    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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References

  1. ↑ https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/insert-a-table-of-contents-882e8564-0edb-435e-84b5-1d8552ccf0c0
  2. ↑ https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/insert-a-table-of-contents-882e8564-0edb-435e-84b5-1d8552ccf0c0

About This Article

wikiHow is a “wiki,” similar to Wikipedia, which means that many of our articles are co-written by multiple authors. To create this article, 9 people, some anonymous, worked to edit and improve it over time. This article has been viewed 153,639 times.
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Co-authors: 9
Updated: July 18, 2022
Views: 153,639
Categories: Microsoft Word
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