Even More Word Q & A

This question came across my desk last week.

Can you add a section TOC in a Word document?

You have your main table of contents, or TOC, at the beginning of your document—but what if you want to create a separate TOC in one of the sections or chapters of your document?

For example, can you list your level 1 and level 2 headings in the main table of contents at the beginning of the document and list your level 3 headings inside the section of the document where they appear?

At this point, you may be thinking, "Of course you can. You just use field codes."

That's true. However, building a TOC from scratch in the Field dialog box can be daunting. And you don't have to do it that way—at least, not all the way that way.

Instead, to build a table of contents, you can start with the Table of Contents dialog box.

Adding a separate section TOC in Word?

First, create the table of contents that's going to go at the beginning of the document.

(Remember to assign styles to the all headings that you want to appear in your TOC.)

On the References tab, click Table of Contents, and then click Insert Table of Contents. In the dialog box, specify to show only two levels.

Click OK.

Now click where you want to insert the section TOC.

Click Table of Contents and Insert Table of Contents again, and then click Options. In the Available styles list, delete the values for Heading 1 and Heading 2, and then type 3 in the box for Heading 3.

Click OK twice—and when you're asked whether you want to replace the existing TOC, click No.

What if I want separate TOCs in more than one section?

Good question! This takes a little more time, but it can be done. To add a separate section TOC for each section or chapter, you need to use bookmarks. Select all of the text, including the headings, that you want in the first section TOC, and then on the Insert tab, click Bookmark.

In the Bookmark dialog box, type a name, such as Chapter1, click Add, and then click OK.

Create bookmarks for each section or chapter that will need a section TOC.

After your bookmarks are in place, you can insert the section TOC the same way that you did before. Just don't be alarmed when it shows every level 3 heading in your document. We're going to fix that.

Click next to that section TOC, and then press ALT+F9. Your TOC is replaced by a field code that probably looks something like this.

{ TOC \o "3-3" \h \z \u}

All you need to do is type \b and the name of your bookmark, like this:

{ TOC \o "3-3" \h \z \u \b Chapter1}

Press ALT+F9 again so that you can see the TOC. Press F9 to update it—and when asked, click to update the whole table.

Getting the rest of your section TOCs into your document is easy. Press ALT+F9 again to see the field code. Select it, press CTRL+C to copy it, and then paste it in each place that you want to add a TOC, changing the name to the correct bookmark name for that location.

After you paste and update the last section TOC, press ALT+F9 a final time, so that you can see all of the section TOCs in your document.

Done!

- Joannie