TOC doesn't recognize styles

Question

I have written a lengthy document, using the TOC1, TOC2, and TOC3 headings in "styles" to delineate chapters.  The table of contents function worked well for a while to make my TOC, but now it no longer recognizes the titles.  I have tried going through the document and re-designating the titles, but Word 2013 still won't recognize them for the purpose of generating a TOC.  Any suggestions?

Answer 1

If you are saying that you have created a TOC successfully and you then edited (the headings of) the document, you have to update the TOC. Click in it and press F9; if prompted, choose to update the whole table.

Did you read the article I linked to? It explains how TOCs work in Word.

Answer 2

The TOC 1, TOC 2, etc. styles are used by Word to format the entries in the table of contents. For the actual heading paragraphs in the document, use the built-in headings (you can customize their formatting as you wish). See http://shaunakelly.com/word/numbering/tableofcontents.html.

Answer 3

Gentlemen,

Thank you both for taking the time to help me.  Your replies allowed me to work through the problem.  I am now able to generate the TOC.

Regards,

Gary

Answer 4

The styles that the Table of Contents compiler uses are the Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, etc. styles, which you need to apply to items in the body of the document for those items to be included in the table of contents.

The TOC styles are used in the formatting of the table of contents itself.

Take a look at the link that Stefan provided.

Answer 5

Hi Stefan,

Thank you for your reply.  The problem I am having is getting the TOC generator to recognize the pre-designated styles to format my TOC for me.  I'm not sure if I've inadvertently changed something, but the "custom TOC" generator isn't recognizing the designated text styles as it should (as it did when I first wrote the document).  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Gary