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If you lot're working on a document that requires a tabular array of contents, Microsoft Word has an easy-to-implement feature based on born heading styles. Word uses Heading 1, Heading two, and then on to build a table of contents; however, the resulting table of contents by default is almost devoid of formatting–it's downright banal. I'll show you how to change the table of contents styles–specifically, we'll add a bit of color, but yous could apply a number of formats.

I'1000 using Part 365 on a Windows 10 64-chip organization, but yous can use earlier versions of Discussion. Yous can work with your own document or download the demonstration .docx and .doc files. The browser edition will display an existing table of contents and even let you update it, but y'all can't add a table of contents or alter a manner.

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Word's default tabular array of contents

You lot might wait heading styles used in your Word document to persist in a table of contents, but that's not how it works; while this behavior might seem odd at first, it'south by pattern. As a general dominion, a tabular array of contents is fairly bland. The table of contents will non have the aforementioned formatting as the heading styles.

Figure A shows a uncomplicated tabular array of contents with 3 heading levels: Heading i, Heading 2, and Heading 3. All three styles are blue—a font format. I added a direct color format, ruby, to 1 Heading 2 example to be comprehensive. (If you're using a theme, blueish might non be the predominant color.)

Effigy A

The tabular array of contents isn't blue even though the built-in heading styles are.

Word doesn't use the heading styles (whether born or custom) practical to the certificate'southward headings to format a table of contents. You lot could add direct formatting to the table of contents, simply every time you update it, you'll have to reapply the format. Fortunately, there's an easier solution: Modify the born tabular array of contents styles.

Give-and-take's table of contents styles

Word uses a dedicated prepare of styles to format a table of contents. If you want to permanently format the table of contents, you lot'll have to modify the corresponding styles.

To access the tabular array of contents styles, click the Home tab, and then click the dialog launcher for the Fashion group to open the Styles. If y'all're working in a document that already has a tabular array of contents, you'll observe the table of content styles in use. For instance, the demonstration document uses three levels in the tabular array of contents, so those corresponding styles are available in the pane (Figure B).

Effigy B

The corresponding table of contents styles should be bachelor in the Styles pane if the current document has a tabular array of contents.

If the table of contents styles aren't in the pane, exercise the following to add them:

  1. Click the Options button at the lesser of the Style Pane.
  2. In the resulting dialog, choose All Styles from the Select Styles To Evidence dropdown.
  3. Select Alphabetical from the Select How List Is Sorted dialog (Figure C).
  4. Click OK. In truth, you lot added all of the styles to the pane, not merely the table of contents styles.

Effigy C

Display all styles, alphabetically, in the Style Pane.

How to change a table of contents mode in Give-and-take

Once you have the table of contents styles in the Styles pane, y'all tin hands modify them. To demonstrate, let's add together color to level two, which corresponds to Heading ii and TOC 2. Follow these steps:

  1. Pollex down in the styles pane until y'all notice TOC ii.
  2. Click TOC ii's dropdown and cull Modify from the resulting submenu.
  3. In the resulting dialog, cull blue from the color dropdown (Figure D) and click OK.

Figure D

Add a colour to the level 2 tabular array of contents style, TOC 2.

As you can see in Effigy Due east, all level ii items are now blueish. Note that the red heading in the document doesn't modify. We didn't modify Heading 2–we modified TOC two. This is why there are ii sets of styles—one for the headings in your document and one for each level in the table of contents. Too note that there's a manner for the tabular array's heading: TOC Heading. Although nosotros added a simple colour format, you can use this aforementioned technique to completely stylize a table of contents, if warranted.

Figure E

Add color to a document's table of contents.

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