Word - TOC Options Say it real fast - Microsoft's TOC options. Meanwhile, back in the real world.... The sample doc at wdsample02.doc is developing nicely, but the TOC needs some adjustments. Today's TiP of the Day shows how to tweak a TOC. First, the TOC generator pulls in a couple of headings we don't want - the Title and Subtitle entries from the title page. How did they get into the TOC, and how do we get rid of them? View the sample document in Normal View. Go to the first line in the TOC, move your cursor to the left until it turns into a two o'clock arrow, and click left. That selects the whole TOC field. Now go to menu: Insert > Index and Tables > Table of Contents, to bring up the dialog box. Word lets you choose what paragraph styles you want included in your TOC, which is exactly why you want to use styles instead of local overrides on Normal to declare your headings - a Normal paragraph is not nearly as useful as a Heading 1 or Heading 2 in a TOC listing. In the TOC dialog, click on the Options button in the lower right corner. The Table of Contents Options dialog pops up, showing the selected styles that will be collected for the TOC. This looks all right - Heading 1, Heading 2, and Heading 3. So, why do we have the Title and Subtitle in our sample doc TOC? Grab the scrollbox in the TOC Level combo list, and drag it to the bottom of the scrollbar. Now we see what's going on - Word has (helpfully?) preselected the Subtitle and Title styles for TOCs generated in this document! How do we turn them off? Select and delete the numbers in the TOC Level for Subtitle and Title to turn them off. No number for the TOC level means the style will not be selected for generated TOCs. Click OK to close the Table of Contents Options dialog, and OK again to close the Table of Contents dialog. You get an immediate popup asking if you want to replace the selected Table of Contents. Click OK to see if we have actually made an improvement in the TOC. Yup - the TOC comes up with only Heading 1, Heading 2, and Heading 3 entries. Subtitle and Title are nowhere to be seen, except in their rightful place on the title page. Two more tweaks - let's make the type a little larger, and make the Heading 1 entries stand out a bit more. Go to menu: Format > Style. Scroll down the Style list and select TOC 1. The Description in the lower right says, "Normal +, Automatically Update." That means the style is based on Normal - it's the same as Normal with some additions (the tabbing to move the page numbers to the right), and it will automatically update if you change it by tinkering with the settings in the document itself (NOT recommended!). Let's change TOC 1 to Arial, Bold, 14 point. Click on Modify > Format > Font. Choose Arial, then Bold, then 12 point. Click on OK to close the Font dialog. The change is instant! Click on OK again to close the Modify Style dialog. Click on Close to get back to the document. The new sample document, with the improved TOC, is at wdsample03.doc, ready for the next topic - DeNormalizing the Text.