Word For Authors: The Table of Contents

A well organized Word document will make turning your work into a Kindle or print book far easier if you simply follow some basic suggestions.

If you followed the guidelines I wrote in previous posts about the use of Heading Styles then creating the table of contents will be very easy. If you didn't use heading styles, go back to my post and fix your document.

The Word table of contents creation feature defaults to Heading 1 through Heading 3. Using the default styles makes creating a table of contents super easy. Most novels don’t really lend themselves to a table of contents, but Amazon / KDP requires one for the Kindle version, so use the default headings and make it easy on yourself. (I usually put the Kindle table of contents at the end if it is just Chapter 1, Chapter 2…)

Click the References tab on the Word toolbar. Next, click Table of Contents on the left. Then choose Custom Table of Contents at the bottom.


Adjust the number in Show Levels. If you only used Heading 1 in your document, set it to 1. If you used Heading 2, set it to 2. Get it? If you are creating a document for the Kindle, uncheck Show page numbers. If you are creating this document for print, you can click the Modify button to set the font, size, line spacing for each level. TOC 1 relates to Heading 1, TOC 2 relates to Heading 2... You can click OK and see your table of contents. If you want to adjust it further click anywhere in the table and reselect Custom table of contents, then the Modify button to add more changes until you get the look you want.




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