Table of Contents won't insert - please help!

[taleslie]

Version: 2008 I keep getting:

"Word did not find any entries for your table of contents"

I've already used styles to identify the contents list text, but following the instructions out of the "Help" section of my Word program is not working.

Please help!

Leslie

 

[CyberTaz]

Hi Leslie;

You need to supply complete version & update levels for both Office as well
as OS X in order for anyone to offer specific advice.

In general, however, the additional question to be answered is "What Styles
did you use?". The built-in Heading 1-9 Styles are associated with Levels
1-9 respectively. If you used those styles to format your Headings the TOC
should not be a problem to generate.

OTOH, if you created your own styles without assigning a Level to them as a
part of their definition or used built-in Styles not associated with Levels
the program has no idea what to look for other than entries that don't exist
because none of the Styles conform to what's being looked for. If you modify
your Styles to add the appropriate Level designation the TOC generator will
be able to pick them up when you update the TOC.

Your alternative to modifying the Styles is to use the Options button in the
Insert> Index & Tables - Table of Contents dialog to assign the Levels for
your Styles there. You can also manually insert TC fields if you prefer, but
that takes some extra know-how & time.

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[John McGhie]

To keep this really simple:

1) Use the Built-in Heading 1 through Heading 9 series of styles. They are
pre-configured so it will just work.

2) You need to use those styles on the Body Text ‹ the main text of the
document, NOT on the contents list.

The TOC generator copies the headings from the body of the document, adds
their page numbers, and drops them into the Table of Contents.

The headings it wants must be in the body: it cannot look inside text boxes,
graphics, or headers and footers (because, for technical reasons, these are
not "part of the main text flow" of the document).

Hope this helps

Version: 2008 I keep getting:

"Word did not find any entries for your table of contents"

I've already used styles to identify the contents list text, but following the
instructions out of the "Help" section of my Word program is not working.

Please help!

Leslie

--

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[taleslie]

Thank you for taking the time to respond. It worked to use the heading styles. I was having trouble using my own selected style, and even when I tried to use TOC styles. I'll stick to heading styles now - they're much simpler.

Thanks again!

 

[John McGhie]

Yeah: That's a trap for young players

YOU do not use the TOC styles, ever. Word uses them automatically when it
generates the TOC.

The TOC styles should never be applied anywhere else in the document,
they're only for formatting the TOC. Word will change the format of the TOC
styles in order to produce the different built-in TOC appearances. So if
you use the TOC styles anywhere else, you will get these mysterious changes
to the TOC style formatting.

Cheers

Thank you for taking the time to respond. It worked to use the heading
styles. I was having trouble using my own selected style, and even when I
tried to use TOC styles. I'll stick to heading styles now - they're much
simpler.

Thanks again!

--

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Clive Huggan]

And I guess you know that you can change Word's ransom-note typography to
whatever appearance you want for the styles...

Cheers,

Clive Huggan
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