Create a table of contents

To create a table of contents that's easy to keep up-to-date, first apply heading styles – Heading 1 and Heading 2, for example – to the text that you want to include in the table of contents. For information on heading styles, see Add a heading.

Word finds those headings and uses them to build the table of contents and can update the table of contents anytime you change the heading text, sequence, or level.

1. Click where you want to insert the table of contents – usually near the beginning of a document.

2. Click References > Table of Contents and then choose an Automatic Table from the gallery of styles.

If you choose Manual Table, Word will insert placeholder text that creates the look of a table of contents. A Manual Table does not update automatically.

You can customize the way a table of contents appears. For example, you can change the font, how many heading levels to show, and whether to show dotted lines between the entries and the page numbers. To learn how, see Format a table of contents.

More about tables of contents

• Start page numbering later in your document

• Introduction to Tables of Contents (TOCs)

• Use hyperlinks in a table of contents