Manually overriding a Table of Contents

[templarius1]

I have been cutting and pasting between documents. There originally was a
TOC created. It pretty much still fits. However, some of the information
must be modified to be accurate. I think the best way to do this is to
manually update portions of the TOC. How can this be done? Thanks,

 

[CyberTaz]

No disrespect, but your plan really isn't the "best" way In fact, it
might well cost you the document. You'd be tampering with an internally
generated field in a manner contrary to how it is intended to be used. Even
if it didn't eventually break the doc your changes would eventually be
overridden when the TOC field updates & you'd repeatedly have to go through
the process tying to keep it current... and going berzerk as a result.

If the doc is appropriately & consistently formatted by the use of Styles
you should only have to Control/Right-Click the existing TOC & select the
Update Field command. Alternatively you can insert TC fields as required,
then update the TOC. Do some research in Word Help on the subject & review
the helpful info available from these links:

http://word.mvps.org/faqs/formatting/TOCSwitches.htm

http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/TOCTips.htm

http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/toc/CreateATOC.html

 

[John McGhie [MVP Word, Word Mac]]

I'm with Bob:

You should never, ever, manually edit a TOC. As soon as you do, you remove
the benefit of having an Automatic TOC.

So you might as well remove the TOC, if that's what you are going to do

Try selecting the TOC and then Ctrl + Alt + Shift + F9 to convert the TOC to
plain text (someone check that keystroke for me, I'm Mac-less currently...)

The TOC becomes plain text, you can edit it at will and it will stay the way
you made it. Of course this means that you will have to manually check and
correct EVERY page number EVERY time you print

You will find that it is far, far quicker to make the automatic TOC generate
correctly. Begin by clicking in it and hitting F9. Chances are, that's all
you will have to do.

If not, then run through the document and make sure you have correctly
applied the appropriate style (Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3 or Heading
4...) to each of the paragraphs you want to appear in the TOC. If you have
copied from sources that were ready for publication in their original form,
that will be all you have to do: the TOC will now regenerate correctly each
time, with its page numbers.

Bob's second technique, using TC fields, is of value only when you want the
entry in the TOC to be "different" from the heading in the text. Normally:
that entire concept is an absurdity! The TOC is supposed to show a user
where a named paragraph is in the book. So if you were to look in the TOC
and see a heading "How to peel apples" and turn to the page number only to
find that the only heading on the page was "Unwrapping fruit" you would have
confused the hell out of your reader. You wouldn't want to do that. The
only time I can think of using TC fields is where you have a heading that
says "Australia and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) Members" and you want it
to appear in the TOC as "ANZAC Members". Personally, I would, at that
point, shoot the author for creating a bad heading. But sometimes you don't
have time, or you may find the Author is already dead because the Editor got
there first...

Hope this helps

--

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

http://jgmcghie.fastmail.com.au/

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Clive Huggan]

I'm with Bob:

You should never, ever, manually edit a TOC. As soon as you do, you remove
the benefit of having an Automatic TOC.

So you might as well remove the TOC, if that's what you are going to do

Try selecting the TOC and then Ctrl + Alt + Shift + F9 to convert the TOC to
plain text (someone check that keystroke for me, I'm Mac-less currently...)

<snip>

John, the keyboard shortcut to convert displayed field texts (including
table of contents entries) to ordinary text, after being selected, is
Command-Shift-F9.

Cheers,

Clive
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