Use one cell in a table to create TOC (Microsoft Word)

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I have a large document that is almost entirely a table. To help me find sections, it would be nice to have a TOC. But if I indicate a cell for the TOC, the actual contents show all of the cells in that row (each with a separate entry).

Is it possible to generate a Table of Contents using only the information in one cell?

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Did you apply the style to the entire row or just the first cell in that row?

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I did not apply a “style” as such. I just in the past have used the standard menu command to add a TOC reference. The standard command takes the entire paragraph, regardless of cursor position or highlighted text.

I was not aware that the TOC uses a style (although I should have realized it in hindsight). Is there a simple way of adding that style to some highlighted words?

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Sure you can apply a (character) style to a few words but it is more common to apply a Paragraph style to the entire paragraph and use that as your trigger for the TOC entry.

Since you want the first cell to become a TOC entry then you can simply apply the style to the paragraph inside that cell and make sure the other cells do not use the same style.

If you do a google search for “Word Table of Contents Tutorial” you should find lots of explanations of how to work with TOCs.

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I have to admit–I was lazy and did not do my homework.:(

I have now done my research and discovered a couple of interesting things:
–Using the style (“Heading 1” for instance) works ONLY if it includes the words at the start of a paragraph. Fortunately, Word considers the content of each cell in a table to be a separate paragraph so it is working for me.
–Using the style method also changes the appearance of the document as the default styles are different from the Normal style. (Of course, the style can be modified). This differs from the default technique for a TOC, which does not affect the document appearance.

If anybody knows how to label text without changing appearance, it would be appreciated.

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[*]You can modify the appearance of the heading styles to match that of your body text if you want.
[*]You can use TC fields instead of styles to generate a Table of Contents

SeeComplex Documents – Create a Table of Contents
Generating a Table of Contents
and TOC Tricks and Tips

That’s all the homework you need right now. However, if you spend much time using Word you owe it to yourself and your co-workers to master using Styles.

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