Table of Contents: hierarchy of headings, creating, customizing, maintaining, updating and deleting a ToC

Hello students, welcome to Kwickprep. Your project report has thirty pages. Typing the contents page by hand, with every page number, takes long and goes wrong easily. What if Writer could make it for you in one click? Today we will learn to create, customise, update and delete a Table of Contents in LibreOffice Writer.

First, what is a Table of Contents? It is a list of the headings in a document, with the page number of each. It is placed at the start, like the contents page of your textbook. It helps a reader jump to the right topic quickly. Writer builds it by itself, but only from headings that use heading styles.

So what is a style? A style is a saved set of formatting, like font, size and spacing, with a name. Writer already has styles called Heading one, Heading two and Heading three. You apply them from the paragraph style box, at the left of the formatting toolbar. Just making text big and bold does not make it a heading, and it will not appear in the contents.

Headings form a hierarchy, which means an order from big to small, like a family tree. Heading one is the top level, used for a chapter title, like Networks. Heading two is a section inside it, like Types of network. Heading three is a smaller part inside that section, like LAN.

Now let us create one. First, apply heading styles to every heading in your document. Next, click at the place where the contents should go, usually the first page. Then open the Insert menu, choose Table of Contents and Index, then Table of Contents, Index or Bibliography. A dialog box opens where you can choose options. Click OK, and the Table of Contents appears with all the page numbers.

Customising means changing how the contents look. The same dialog box has five tabs. On the Type tab, you can change the title and choose how many heading levels to show. On the Entries tab, you can change what each line shows, such as page number and hyperlink. On the Styles tab, you can pick the style used for each level. On the Columns tab, you can set the number of columns. On the Background tab, you can add a colour or an image behind it.

Three options on the Type tab are asked often. The title box lets you change the words at the top, for example to Contents. Evaluate up to level decides how deep the list goes, so three shows Heading one, two and three. Protected against manual changes stops you typing inside the contents by mistake, so keep it ticked.

Maintaining the contents means keeping it correct as the document grows. Always use heading styles for every new heading you add. Never type changes inside the contents by hand, because an update will wipe them out. And press Ctrl and click any entry to jump straight to that heading.

Now pause and predict. You add a new heading two on page twelve. You look at the contents, and the new heading is missing. Is the contents now wrong forever? No, the contents does not refresh by itself, so it just needs an update.

There are two ways to update it. Right-click anywhere inside the contents and choose Update Index. Or open the Tools menu, choose Update, then Update All. Either way, new headings and changed page numbers appear at once.

Editing and deleting also start with a right-click. Right-click anywhere inside the contents. Choose Edit Index to open the dialog again and change any option. Choose Delete Index to remove the whole contents in one go. Deleting it does not touch your headings in the document, so you can create it again any time.

Let us revise what we learned today. A Table of Contents lists headings with their page numbers. It is built from Heading one, two and three styles, in a hierarchy. Create it from the Insert menu, under Table of Contents and Index. After changes, right-click it and choose Update Index. To change or remove it, right-click and choose Edit Index or Delete Index.