Microsoft Word Heading Styles

To allow Microsoft Word to generate a table of contents based on your text, you must use headings in your “Styles and Formatting.” To accomplish this, follow these steps:

1. Click the “Format” tab in your Word document. Choose “Styles and Formatting.” This should bring up another window within Microsoft Word with several style choices.
2. In the “Styles and Formatting” window (the right-hand window), move your cursor over “Heading 1” and click the dropdown arrow on the right.
3. Click “Modify.” A window should pop up. In this window you will modify the style of your “Heading 1.” Once you choose the font type (use the same font face as the rest of the text), size, and style, this should be applied consistently to any heading you select to be a “Heading 1.”
4. Select the text you would like to create as “Heading 1” Highlight this text with your cursor. Click “Heading 1” in the “Styles and Formatting” window to the right.
5. Repeat steps 2-4 with the rest of the heading levels you wish to use for the document.
6. Once you have applied heading styles to the entire document, place your cursor on the page you wish to use as your table of contents. Click the “Insert” tab in the Word document. Select “Reference” then “Index and Tables.”
7. In the “Index and Tables” window, click the tab for “Table of Contents.”
8. You may choose the number of heading levels you wish to include in the table of contents (the default is 3 levels), then click “OK.” Word will generate your table of contents.
9. To update the table of contents, right-click on the table of contents. Select “Update field.” You may choose to either update the entire table or update page numbers only. Perform this step any time you make corrections to the text.

Modified from “Using Adobe Acrobat 7.0 to Create an Electronic Thesis or Dissertation” by P.J. Snodgrass, 2005.