InDesign

About tables of contents

A table of contents (TOC) can list the contents of a book, magazine, or other publication; display a list of illustrations, advertisers, or photo credits; or include other information to help readers find information in a document or book file. One document may contain multiple tables of contents—for example, a list of chapters and a list of illustrations.

Each table of contents is a separate story consisting of a heading and a list of entries sorted either by page number or alphabetically. Entries, including page numbers, are pulled directly from content in your document and can be updated at any time—even across multiple documents in a book file.

The process for creating a table of contents requires three main steps. First, create and apply the paragraph styles you’ll use as the basis for the TOC. Second, specify which styles are used in the TOC and how the TOC is formatted. Third, flow the TOC into your document.

Table of contents entries can be automatically added to the Bookmarks panel for use in documents exported as Adobe PDF.

Tips for planning a table of contents

Consider the following when planning a table of contents:

  • Some tables of contents are built from content that does not actually appear in the published document, such as a list of advertisers in a magazine. To do this in InDesign, enter content on a hidden layer and include it when generating a TOC.

  • You can load TOC styles from other documents or books to build new tables of contents with the same settings and formatting. (You might need to edit an imported TOC style if the names of paragraph styles in the document do not match those in the source document.)

  • You can create paragraph styles for the table of contents’ title and entries, including tab stops and leaders, if desired. You can then apply these paragraph styles when you generate the table of contents.

  • You can create character styles to format the page numbers and the characters separating them from the entries. For example, if you want the page numbers to be in bold, create a character style that includes the bold attribute, and then select that character style when you create the table of contents.

For a video on creating a table of contents, see www.adobe.com/go/vid0219.