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MS Word Online - Table of Contents is grayed out. How do i enable update of TOC when editing online

Anonymous
2020-05-05T14:10:22+00:00

Hi all - we have a document online for collaboration with other team members. Our MS Word TOC section under "References" tab is grayed out making us unable to update the TOC unless we are downloading the document and re-uploading it again. Can someone help why would the TOC section be grayed out and what i can do to update or add new TOC section when editing online?

thanks in advance!

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2020-05-05T17:38:35+00:00

    Hi meltj,

    Thank you for posting your question in this community. From your description, you have one Word document in Word for web application cannot be updated Table of Contents which Update Table of Contents are greyed out in Word for web application.

    Generally, the table of content option is greyed out could be varieties of reasons, for example, a restriction editing of this document could make this option is greyed out.

    To further understand your scenario, may I know the following information at your convenience?

    1: Are you able to open this document in Word Desktop application and update the table of contents?

     

    2: How about the other Word documents under this online location, either OneDrive or SharePoint document? Are they able to update table of contents?

    3: You can also try to create sample file with table of contents and see whether you can update it in Word for the web application at your convenience.

    Best regards,

    Dihao

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  1. Stefan Blom 339.2K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2020-07-26T13:58:42+00:00

    Word Online allows you to update a table of contents that has been added to the document using the full version of Word. You can't use Word Online to insert a new TOC, as far as I know.

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  2. Stefan Blom 339.2K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2020-05-28T14:45:50+00:00

    You can't edit the table of contents of a document in Word Online. To do that, you will have to open the document in the locally installed full version of Word.

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-05-28T15:50:23+00:00

    Actually that's not true. i tested it with sample word per Dihao's recommendation and i was able to update the ToC with word Online if i add new heading/section. 

    In any case, i think i'll just have to revisit the other documentations and re-establish the ToC before uploading it to the tool we have and then maybe let user to update ToC from there. I am assuming the current problem i have is in the underlying original document where ToC is not set up properly then.

    Thanks again for all the input!! It has been very helpful!!

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  4. Stefan Blom 339.2K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2020-05-05T17:35:11+00:00

    When something is disabled, that usually means it isn't supported during co-authoring.

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