InDesign

Generate a table of contents

Before you generate a table of contents, decide which paragraphs should be included (such as chapter titles and section headings), and then define paragraph styles for each. Make sure that these styles are applied to all appropriate paragraphs in the document or booked documents.

When you generate the table of contents, you can also use paragraph and character styles to format the table of contents.

Table of contents without paragraph styles (left) and with paragraph styles applied to entries (right)

  1. Do one of the following:

    • If you’re creating a table of contents for a single document, you may want to add a new page at the beginning of the document.

    • If you’re creating a table of contents for multiple documents in a book, create or open the document to be used for the table of contents, make sure that it’s included in the book, and then open the book file.

  2. Choose Layout > Table Of Contents.

    If you’ve defined a TOC style that has the appropriate settings for your TOC, you can choose it from the TOC Style menu.

  3. In the Title box, type a title for your TOC (such as Contents or List of Figures). This title will appear at the top of the table of contents. To format the title, choose a style from the Style menu.
  4. Determine which content you want to include in the table of contents by double-clicking paragraph styles in the Other Styles list to add them to the Include Paragraph Styles list.
  5. Select Include Book Documents to create a single table of contents for all documents in the book list, and to renumber the book’s pages. Deselect this option if you want to generate a table of contents for the current document only. (This option is dimmed if the current document is not part of a book file.)
  6. Select Replace Existing Table Of Contents to replace all existing table of contents stories in the document. Deselect this option if you want to generate a new table of contents, such as a list of figures.
  7. Specify options to determine how each paragraph style in the table of contents is formatted. (See Options for formatting a table of contents.)
    It’s a good idea to define a TOC style that contains the formatting and other options for your table of contents. To do so, click Save Style. You can also create TOC styles by choosing Layout > Table Of Contents Styles.
  8. Click OK.

    A loaded text cursor  appears. Before you click, you can move to a different page or create a new page without losing the loaded text.

  9. Click or drag the loaded text cursor on a page to place the new table of contents story.
Note: Avoid threading the TOC frame to other text frames in the document. If you replace the existing TOC, the entire story will be replaced by the updated TOC.