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Navigating long Word documents (1)

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In fact, Word can help you create these aids quickly and easily. It can scan your document and automatically create a table of contents or table of figures for you. Besides, Word navigation aids also include tables of authorities, indexes and cross-references, and you can insert special marks to identify cross-references, index entries, and other items for automatically generated tables.

In these coming issues, I will show you how to create all of them. But first I would like to brief you what they are so as to avoid any ambiguity:

A Table of Contents (or TOC) lists all chapter or section headings, subheadings, and other contents of a document.

A Table of Figures (or TOF) lists all of the figures in a document.

A Table of Authorities (or TOA) lists cases cited in legal documents, book titles, authors cited in research papers, or other references.

An Index lists alphabetically entries you identify, with their page numbers.

Cross-references direct readers to other parts of the document for more information about a topic.

Now let's see how to create a Table of Contents. Actually Word allows you to generate an automatic TOC based on 'Heading' styles in a document. It gathers up the text from every heading formatted with a 'Heading' style and arranges the headings in order in the TOC. The 'Heading' style level also determines the indent level in the TOC. For instance, 'Heading 2' styles are indented to the right of 'Heading 1' styles.

In addition, when you create a TOC, Word creates a new section at the insertion point and puts the TOC into it. The TOC is actually a large data field, but you can select, edit, or reformat individual table entries or move the table.

Below is the complete set of procedures for creating an automatic TOC:

1. Format all headings of the document with 'Heading' styles of Word.

2. Proof read your document by using proofing tools of Word to check spelling, grammar, and readability so that the text is exactly the way you want it.

3. Place the insertion point where you want the TOC to appear.

4. Choose 'Index & Tables' from the 'Insert' menu to open the 'Index & Tables' dialog box.

5. Click the 'Table of Contents' tag to display the options available.

6. Choose any of the TOC formats from the 'Formats' list at the bottom and check out its effect in the 'Print Preview' box above.

7. Enter a different number in the 'Show Levels' box to change the number of 'Heading' style levels that will be included in the TOC.

8. Change the tag leader or page number display options if you like.

9. Click 'OK' and Word will add the table to your document.

10. Enter text as usual with any formats you like to insert a title for the TOC.

Next time I will introduce how to add custom TOC entries.

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(Email address: 'Daniel_KC_To@ police.gov.hk)