To apply a heading style, select the text you want to format, then choose the desired heading in the Styles group on the Home tab. But I need to create a table of contents with updatable elements manually rather than automatically because an automatically created table of contents is difficult to format, and its formatting is reset when it is updated. Words table of contents builder automatically generates a table of contents based on the headings in. There is a way to create a table of contents automatically by going to to References > Table of Contents. In the table of contents above, each chapter uses a heading style, so there are four sections. 1.Format the headings of each section of your document. When you insert the table of contents, it will create a section for each heading. If youd like it to appear on its own page, insert a page break (Ctrl+Enter) before and. In the Table of Contents dialog box, if you don't want page numbers to appear in your TOC, clear the Show page numbers check box. If you apply a heading style, you're telling Word that you've started a new part of your document. Click in your document where you want to create the table of contents. On the References tab, in the Table of Contents group, click Table of Contents > Custom Table of Contents. Styles also serve another important purpose: adding a hidden layer of organization and structure to your document. The second option is to insert a manual table of contents.

If you've already read our Applying and Modifying Styles lesson, you know they're an easy way to add professional text formatting to different parts of your document. It means anyone reading your document can use the table of contents to click to a specific section. However, with the right formatting, Word can create and update a table of contents automatically. And if you ever decide to rearrange your sections or add more information, you'll have to update everything all over again. You could create a table of contents manually-typing the section names and page numbers-but it would take a lot of work.

Word manually format table of contents