Changing bulleted list into multi-line (manual) TOC?

K

KR

I've never found Word's TOC functions easy to use, so I usually make my own
TOC manually with short entries and dotted tabs (right justified, etc.). I'm
looking for a better option on my current project- I'm not sure the best way
to do this, either with Word's functions or a different manual method (maybe
it is easy) so I welcome your help. Using Word2003 on Win 2000

I have a bulleted list, where the text for many bullets is more than one
line long. I need to turn this into a TOC, where I will have a page
reference for each bullet (they will actually be reformatted as numbered
instead of bulleted). What I want is for the text to line wrap about 2/3 the
way across the page, and have the "...........NN" with the page number right
justified. I suspect the page number would be aligned with the first row of
the text, not the last wrapped row?

So something like:

1. This is my sample text that represents a line..........................3
that is too long to stick on just one line in my
table of contents.

Right now, I'd just make three separate lines, but in this project, I may
have to do continuous edits of the text in each item, and that seems like a
lot of work to manage for such minor tweaks, so I wanted to see if I could
keep the text as one "piece" that I could edit without messing up the number
or formatting of the whole item or page. I also considered a table, but I
think it would look funny- there might be large gaps in the ".......NN"
depending on the amount and length of text, like
"2. Short item .........................4"

Thanks,
Keith
 
L

Luc

Keith,
Actually making a TOC is not that difficult have a read here for an
excellent tutorial on the subject.
http://www.ShaunaKelly.com/word/toc/CreateATOC.html

If you want to stick to your manual solution then a style seems to be the
best option.
Create your own numbering style using the styles and formatting task pane.
In that style you must set the right indent of the paragraph to a suitable
distance and apply a right tab setting where you want the number to appear.
When applying the style you can use it in two different ways, type the first
line up to the point where you want the text to end and press tab key, type
the page number, hit shift+enter and type the rest of your text, as many
lines as you like. Press enter and repeat the whole scenario.
Second apply the style, type all of your text which will wrap to the right
indent, on the last line press the tab key and type the page number. Second
way seems the best to me as you can easily add or remove text without having
to worry about the number moving up one line.
Luc
 
K

KR

Anne-

Thank you for your reply. I'll go with tables then, although my last concern
in the OP still stands, I guess I have to live with it.

The documents I work with are often created by others, and often modified by
many hands, over long periods of time. As a result, the use of styles is not
consistent, and when I've tried to update TOCs in some documents that do
have them, it goes haywire- pulling in sections that I didn't want because
of the style settings, not pulling in others because they were manually
formatted without using a style, etc. Depending on the length and complexity
of the document, it is often easier (for me, anyway) to re-create a TOC
manually than try to clean up the source document(s). That, plus my own
history goes back to Word97 and earlier, and so maybe I need to overcome
some of my own history, if TOCs are easier to manage these days...

:)

Thanks,
Keith
 
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