In Office 2003 or earlier, use the following steps to insert an automatic table of content
- Format the "Chapter Titles" and whatever else you would want in the Table of Content with pre-defined Styles. In general you can use "Heading 1", "Heading 2", "Heading 3" etc. for the titles at different levels. It is possible to define custom styles and include other things in Table of Content too. But you may very well do without it.
- After the chapters are written, click where you want to insert the Table of Content.
- Go to Insert->Reference->Index and Table (If you are using MS Word/Office 2007, Table of Content feature can be found on "Reference" tab.)
- Click on "Table of Contents" tab. Select the desired options there. Playing around with options a bit would give you an idea of how the table looks the best.
- Sometimes you would have formatted some things with the heading styles, which you would not want in the "Table of Content". You can manually delete those lines manually.
- If you change things is the document, before finalizing it, update the Table of Content. For doing this, right click on the Table of Content and click on "Update Field". There would be two options, namely
- Update page numbers only:Use if no new headings would come, but page numbers might have changed.
- Update Entire Table: Use if you have added new chapter headings etc.
If you are using MS Word 2007, Table of Content feature can be found on "Reference" tab.