Sorting Table of Contents

[Connie]

I have inserted a table of contents at the beginning of
my file of 100 pages. All the headings are there with
their proper page numbers but they are listed in the
order they appear in the file. How does one sort this
list alphabetically?

Connie

 

[Jezebel]

There's no automatic way. You can do it manually: unlink the TOC (select it,
then press Ctrl-Shift-F9); then select Sort from the Table menu. However it
won't then update if you make any changes to your document. Create an index
instead, if you need automatic updating.

Are you sure you want to do this? Readers expect the table of contents to be
in document order.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If you want an alphabetical list, you need an index rather than a TOC; a TOC
is intended to list headings in the order in which they appear.

 

[Connie]

My file is actually my personal recipe book. I put the
name of each recipe as a heading and then created a table
of contents from that. Maybe there's a better way, I
don't know. However, at present, a table of contents not
in alphabetical order is useless for my recipe book---
very hard to find a certain recipe!

 

[Jezebel]

My file is actually my personal recipe book. I put the
name of each recipe as a heading and then created a table
of contents from that. Maybe there's a better way, I
don't know. However, at present, a table of contents not
in alphabetical order is useless for my recipe book---
very hard to find a certain recipe!

That's an index, not a TOC.

 

[Connie]

Thank you. I was hoping to get by with a Table of
Contents, it's so much more user-friendly. An index is
lot more work. But if that's the only way to have it
alphabetical, I guess I have no choice. Really, people
may have other uses than the normal for Table of
Contents, so the option to alphabetize it should be
given, I think. Do you think Bill Gates will listen to
me? Connie

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Usually cookbooks have a TOC at the front and an index at the back. An index
of the titles of recipes (unless they're very generic) is not very helpful,
either. You need to index the actual ingredients, grouped in categories
(look at Joy of Cooking or the like to get the idea). If your book is not
elaborate enough for that, you might want to consider just presenting the
recipes in alphabetical order; then your TOC would be alphabetized
automatically. It would be easy to sort your existing text since you've
already used heading styles for the titles. View the book in Outline view
with just the heading level displayed; then use Table | Sort to sort the
headings. The text below the headings will go with them.