Thumb down in the styles pane until you find TOC 2.To demonstrate, let’s add color to level 2, which corresponds to Heading 2 and TOC 2. Once you have the table of contents styles in the Styles pane, you can easily modify them.
How to modify a table of contents style in Word In truth, you added all of the styles to the pane, not just the table of contents styles.įigure C Display all styles, alphabetically, in the Style Pane. Select Alphabetical from the Select How List Is Sorted dialog ( Figure C).In the resulting dialog, choose All Styles from the Select Styles To Show dropdown.Click the Options button at the bottom of the Style Pane.If the table of contents styles aren’t in the pane, do the following to add them: For instance, the demonstration document uses three levels in the table of contents, so those corresponding styles are available in the pane ( Figure B).įigure B The corresponding table of contents styles should be available in the Styles pane if the current document has a table of contents. If you’re working in a document that already has a table of contents, you’ll find the table of content styles in use. To access the table of contents styles, click the Home tab, and then click the dialog launcher for the Style group to open the Styles. If you want to permanently format the table of contents, you’ll have to modify the corresponding styles. Word uses a dedicated set of styles to format a table of contents. Fortunately, there’s an easier solution: Modify the built-in table of contents styles.
You could add direct formatting to the table of contents, but every time you update it, you’ll have to reapply the format.
Word doesn’t use the heading styles (whether built-in or custom) applied to the document’s headings to format a table of contents. (If you’re using a theme, blue might not be the predominant color.)įigure A The table of contents isn’t blue even though the built-in heading styles are.
I added a direct color format, red, to one Heading 2 instance to be comprehensive. The table of contents will not have the same formatting as the heading styles.įigure A shows a simple table of contents with three heading levels: Heading 1, Heading 2, and Heading 3. As a general rule, a table of contents is fairly bland. You might expect heading styles used in your Word document to persist in a table of contents, but that’s not how it works while this behavior might seem odd at first, it’s by design. LEARN MORE: Office 365 Consumer pricing and features Word’s default table of contents The browser edition will display an existing table of contents and even let you update it, but you can’t add a table of contents or modify a style.
You can work with your own document or download the demonstration.
I’m using Office 365 on a Windows 10 64-bit system, but you can use earlier versions of Word. I’ll show you how to modify the table of contents styles–specifically, we’ll add a bit of color, but you could apply a number of formats. Word uses Heading 1, Heading 2, and so on to build a table of contents however, the resulting table of contents by default is almost devoid of formatting–it’s downright bland. If you’re working on a document that requires a table of contents, Microsoft Word has an easy-to-implement feature based on built-in heading styles. Instead, learn how to modify the table's underlying styles. You can add formatting directly, but you'll have to reapply it every time you update the table. Word's table of contents, by default, has no formatting. All Rights Reserved.How to format a table of contents in a Word document * For the Microsoft documentation refer to * This field is considered to be hidden text and will only be displayed when you select (Tools > Options)(View > Hidden text). If no level is specified, level 1 is assumed Use a unique Type identifier (typically a letter from A-Z) for each type of listįor example, to build a list of illustrations, mark each illustration with a field such as marks a level-4 entry, and Microsoft Word applies the built-in style TOC 4 to that entry in the table of contents The type of items collected in a particular contents list Text to appear in the table of contents for an entry. Insert a TOC (Table of Contents) field where you want the contents in the document. To collect the TC field entries into a contents list, use the Index and Tables command (Insert menu, Reference submenu). Insert a TC field immediately before the text you want to include in the contents. Defines the text and page numbers for entries in a table of contents and in lists of tables, figures, and similar contents.