And more options are available if you know how to modify the underlying field. Word’s Ribbon-based interface does such a good job of walking users through the process of generating a TOC, most don’t realize that the resulting TOC is actually a field. As Word evolves and offers more feature via the interface, fields are less visible, but you’re still using them. For instance, when you insert a page number into a document’s header, you’re inserting a field. You probably use them often without realizing it. More specifically, a field is a set of instructions that perform an action automatically.

In a nutshell, fields are dynamic placeholders.

How to build a table of contents by using custom styles in Word 2002 and Word 2003 About Word’s TOC field How to use outline levels to create a table of contents (TOC) in Word 2003 and in Word 2002 If you’d like to learn more about generating a TOC using Word 2003, please review the following articles at : There are no instructions for Word 2003 in this article. If you’re not, you might want to read How to insert a table of contents into a Word document before you continue with this article–but doing so isn’t strictly necessary to follow this article. This article assumes that you’re familiar with Word’s TOC feature and fields. You can work with any simple document or download the demonstration. I’m using Word 2013 with Windows 7 but you can easily apply these instructions to all of Word’s ribbon versions. In this article, I’ll show you two such features: We’ll omit page numbers from individual levels and generate a partial TOC. In fact, doing so is the only way to apply some of the feature’s more advanced options. The TOC is actually built from a field you can manually alter. But there’s more to the feature than you might realize. Word's built-in options for generating and formatting a table of contents are extensive-but field switches offer even more.Īdding a table of contents (TOC) to a long Word document is easy, thanks to the user interface options in the Ribbon versions. Use Word’s TOC field to fine-tune your table of contents

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