Automatic indexing in Word

It is much easier to generate a table of contents automatically in Word by using the different titles in the document, it saves you a lot of time. It requires that you have used the different headline formats (Heading 1, 2 and so on,) you'll find these settings in the style and formatting bar in Word, next to the drop down menu where you can chose the font (text type.)

How to generate the automatic index

1. First, put the cursor in the beginning of the document, and make sure that you have a couple of lines without text below the cursor, or even better, an entire page available (you can push the text below to a new page by pressing ctrl+enter).
2. Automatic indexing in Word2000, Word XP, Word 2003: Choose Insert->Reference->Index and tables, then choose the Table of Contents-tab.
3. Choose the template you want.
4. Choose the number of headline levels you want to include in you index under Show levels. Then press ok, and the index will be generated.

Updating an existing table of contents

Updating the index will be necessary e.g. if you have altered some headlines, or if you have added a couple of pages in the middle of the document. To do this, press the index once so that it turns gray, right click it and choose Update Field. Then choose update page numbers only or update entire table, depending on what you have done to the document.