Troubleshoot tables of contents

If you add, delete, move, or edit headings or other text in a document, click Update TOC on the Outlining toolbar to update the table of contents. For example, you should do this if you edit a heading or move it to a different page.

To display the Outlining toolbar, right-click any toolbar, and then click Outlining.

In order to update a table of contents in a Web frame, you need to position the insertion point inside the frame.

If you make changes in your document that affect page breaks (page break: The point at which one page ends and another begins. Microsoft Word inserts an "automatic" (or soft) page break for you, or you can force a page break at a specific location by inserting a "manual" (or hard) page break.), the page numbers shown in the table may need to be updated. Try the following solutions:

• Update the table field A table of contents is inserted in your document as a field (field: A set of codes that instructs Microsoft Word to insert text, graphics, page numbers, and other material into a document automatically. For example, the DATE field inserts the current date.). To update the table of contents, click to the left of the table of contents, and then press F9.
• Hide fields or hidden text Index entries and table of authorities entries are inserted in your document as fields in hidden text format. To hide these fields or other hidden text in your document, click Show/Hide on the Standard toolbar (toolbar: A bar with buttons and options that you use to carry out commands. To display a toolbar, press ALT and then SHIFT+F10.). Then update the table of contents by clicking in the table of contents and pressing F9.
• Display the hidden breaks between sections or pages Your document may contain section breaks (section break: A mark you insert to show the end of a section. A section break stores the section formatting elements, such as the margins, page orientation, headers and footers, and sequence of page numbers.) or page breaks that are in hidden text format. First, display the hidden text by clicking click Show/Hide on the Standard toolbar. Then find and remove the hidden text format.

How?

After you remove the hidden text format, update the table of contents by clicking in the table of contents and pressing F9.

A table of contents is inserted in your document as a field (field: A set of codes that instructs Microsoft Word to insert text, graphics, page numbers, and other material into a document automatically. For example, the DATE field inserts the current date.). If you see something similar to {TOC} instead of the table of contents, the field is being displayed instead of the field results (field results: Text or graphics inserted in a document when Microsoft Word carries out a field's instructions. When you print the document or hide field codes, the field results replace the field codes.). To view the results for the table of contents, select the entire table of contents field, including the braces {}, and then press SHIFT+F9.

You need to update your table of contents. Click Update TOC on the Outlining toolbar.

 Note   If you have multiple tables of contents in your document, position the insertion point inside the table of contents before you click Update TOC.

When Microsoft Word builds a table of contents, it looks only in the text layer for headings or Table of Contents Entry (TC) fields (field: A set of codes that instructs Microsoft Word to insert text, graphics, page numbers, and other material into a document automatically. For example, the DATE field inserts the current date.). Word ignores any headings or TC fields that appear in the drawing layer — for example, headings in text boxes or callouts.

If you have already inserted the headings, you can move the headings into the text layer, or you can convert the text boxes or callouts to frames.

Try one of the following:

• Apply a different heading style to specific headings Microsoft Word includes in the table of contents all text and graphics formatted with the following styles: built-in heading styles (heading style: Formatting applied to a heading. Microsoft Word has nine different built-in styles: Heading 1 through Heading 9.), styles that include outline-level (outline level: Paragraph formatting you can use to assign a hierarchical level (Level 1 through Level 9) to paragraphs in your document. For example, after you assign outline levels, you can work with the document in outline view or in the Document Map.) formats, or custom styles you specified. If unwanted text and graphics appear in your table of contents, apply a style other than one of these heading styles to the unwanted text or graphics.
• Omit headings formatted with specific heading styles You can also omit a heading (for example, a book title) from the table of contents without changing its heading style. On the Insert menu, point to Reference, click Index and Tables, and then click the Table of Contents tab. Click Options, and then delete the number for the appropriate style in the TOC level box. Note that all text formatted with this heading style will be omitted from the table of contents.

When you choose a design and build a table of contents, Microsoft Word automatically uses the TOC styles (for example, TOC 1 and TOC 2) to format the headings in the finished table of contents. If you want to change the formatting in the table of contents, choose a different design when you build the table of contents.

If you want to match the formatting of the headings in the table of contents with that of the headings in the document, you can modify the TOC styles. Note that if you manually format a heading in your document (for example, make it bold), this formatting is reflected in the finished table of contents.

Although it's possible to mark a portion of a paragraph with a heading style, Microsoft Word includes this text in the table of contents only if the marked text is the initial text of the paragraph. To include text that occurs in the middle of a paragraph, select the text that you want to appear, press ALT+SHIFT+O, and follow the steps for creating a table of contents from TC fields.

The Go to TOC button only goes to the first table of contents in your document, and it works only with tables created from built-in heading styles (heading style: Formatting applied to a heading. Microsoft Word has nine different built-in styles: Heading 1 through Heading 9.) or styles that include outline-level (outline level: Paragraph formatting you can use to assign a hierarchical level (Level 1 through Level 9) to paragraphs in your document. For example, after you assign outline levels, you can work with the document in outline view or in the Document Map.) formats. Therefore, if you have multiple tables of contents in your document or you created your table of contents manually using fields, you'll need to use another method to locate your table.

The Update TOC button updates only the first table of contents in your document, and it works only with tables created from built-in heading styles (heading style: Formatting applied to a heading. Microsoft Word has nine different built-in styles: Heading 1 through Heading 9.) or styles that include outline-level (outline level: Paragraph formatting you can use to assign a hierarchical level (Level 1 through Level 9) to paragraphs in your document. For example, after you assign outline levels, you can work with the document in outline view or in the Document Map.) formats. Therefore, if you have multiple tables of contents in your document or you created your table of contents manually using fields, you'll need to update each table one at a time. To do this, click in each table of contents, and then press F9.