Feb 06, 2017

In today’s blog we will explore creating a Table of Contents from the Master Document. The Master Document now contains a collection of linked Subdocument files all of which has the same Style Guide.

In my previous "Master Document in Word", we also mentioned how we can edit the Subdocuments within the Master Document or edit the individual Subdocuments as you click on the links in the Collapse View (pressing the Enter key with an insertion point inside the link also opens the Subdocument). Either way, as the editor saves the updates that will reflect in the Master Document and the linked Subdocuments.

Open the Master Document file and select View Ribbon to return to the Outline View. In the Master Document group select Show Documents to display the group of tools. As the file may be displayed in the Collapse View with hyperlinks to the Subdocuments, select Expand Documents.

In the expanded view of the Master Document, and further to editing, you may also want to apply sections. In the Outline view, we can add a section break within the content by placing an insertion point above the Lesson 2 heading and if needed enter a new line, then select the Page Layout tab and select Breaks and Next Page break. Collapse View where you will now see a new link.

You can also rearrange the order of Subdocuments by dragging and dropping the documents icon in the expanded view.

Now that you have ensured that the content is in the right order by rearranging the Subdocuments or with section breaks, it's now time to create a Table of Contents in the Master Document. In the expanded view and in the first bullet point, select the References tab and find the Table of Contents below the menu.

In the Table of Contents window, change the Format in the General settings to Classic with a dash line Tab leader. You will see that in the Preview window up the top that it uses the level of Heading Styles to detect the page number of each topic and in the Master Document.

Return to the Print Layout view to see how the Table of Contents appears in the merged Master Document.

From here you can insert a footer with page numbers while in the Print Layout view. Editors can return to the Outline view to edit the content and can rearrange the order of the Subdocuments and adding sections that will update the inserted Table of Contents. While the Table of Contents may not display automatically the change of page numbers due to the edited or rearranged content, by right-clicking in the table of contents and from the menu, select Update Field to display the new page numbers.

Master Documents is a highly efficient way of creating large documents in Microsoft Word and along with the use of Styles.

For more information, take a look at our Microsoft Word training courses.