Word: Adding a TOC for a section

If you have a very large Word document, with lots of chapters/sections and several levels of headings and subheadings, you might want to help your document’s readers by adding a ‘mini’ Table of Contents (TOC) in front of each section, just like the publishers of US textbooks have done for years.  These mini TOCs are in addition to the main TOC near the beginning of your document.

The steps that follow are written for Word 2010, but they work equally well for Word 2007. The same sort of mini TOC can also be inserted in a Word 2003 document, but the steps to insert a bookmark and insert a field are different.

There are two main steps:

1. Insert a bookmark for the section you want to include in the mini TOC
2. Insert a TOC field that references that bookmark in front of the section.

We’ll create a mini TOC for this section (Section 2):

Step 1: Insert a bookmark

1. Select all the text in the section (this selection could cover several pages).
   
2. Go to the Insert tab and select Bookmark.
   
3. Give this bookmark a unique but meaningful name (I’ve called this one Section2), then click Add. NOTE: Bookmarks cannot have spaces.
   
4. If you have the Show Bookmarks option turned on (and I suggest that you do), then you’ll see light gray square brackets around the bookmark.
   

Step 2: Insert a TOC field

Once you’ve set up your bookmark, you need to insert a TOC field in front of the section. Unlike the normal TOC at the beginning of your document that builds the TOC based on just heading levels, your mini TOC is built on the bookmark you defined AND the heading levels within that bookmark (at least, I *think* that’s what’s going on!).

1. Go to a blank area in front of the section. Press Enter a couple of times to add some space for the mini TOC.
2. Go to the Insert tab, click Quick Parts, then select Field.
   
3. Select TOC from the list of field names on the left, then click the Field Codes button.
   
4. Click the Options button at the bottom left of the Field window to open the Field Options window.
5. On the Field Options window, select \b, then click Add to Field. Hint: If you want to know what each switch does, click on it and read its Description.
   
6. Add a space after \b, then type the name of the bookmark you created earlier, then click OK. NOTE: The space after the \b is critical — without it, your TOC won’t work; however, your bookmark name should NOT have a space.
   
7. The complete field code, with bookmark switch and the bookmark name you typed, is shown in the Advanced field properties text box on the Field window. Click OK.
   
8. The mini TOC is inserted in front of the section heading:
   
9. Optional: You can make this section stand out by adding a title for it. In this example, I just typed Section 2 on an empty line in front of the mini TOC, then styled it using Word 2010’s text effects (Home tab, Font group)
   

More

• Repeat the steps above for all other sections where you want a mini TOC.
• To update the mini TOC, put your cursor anywhere in it, then press F9 (or right-click anywhere in the mini TOC and select Update field).
• If you want to create a fancy title for the mini TOC that reflects the Heading 1 of the section and you don’t want to repeat the Heading 1 in the mini TOC, then don’t select the Heading 1 when selecting the area for the bookmark.
• Update 27 June 2014: If you PDF your document using the Acrobat add-in, you’ll have clickable links for the main TOC, but not for this mini one, so place your cursor at the beginning of the first line of the mini TOC, right-click, then edit the field for the mini TOC so it looks like this: TOC \o “1-3” \h \z \u \b Section2 (“1-3” tells the mini TOC to display heading levels 1 to 3, and the bookmark name will vary according to which bookmark applies to this mini TOC). Now, when you PDF the doc, the mini TOC will have clickable links.

[Links last checked February 2011]