OmniDocHow to correct the text or extra titles in the Word table of contents
When text or irrelevant headings appear in the Word table of contents, most likely the paragraphs are set to heading style or outline level. This article gives the order of troubleshooting according to the reasons. First, clean up the source, and then update the table of contents so that the table of contents only retains the real chapter titles.
Key points of this article
- The index is based on paragraph style and outline level, not font size and boldness. Text that looks like a title will not be included in the index.
- Use the Navigation Pane to step through the table of contents entries, find the corresponding paragraph, and check its style name and outline level.
- Change the mistakenly set text, captions, lists, and cover titles back to the text style, clear the remaining formatting, and then update the table of contents.
- When updating, choose to update the entire table of contents. Only updating the page numbers cannot remove the extra entries.
- Keep chapter titles in a continuous hierarchy, and use unformatted pasting when copying content, which can reduce future errors.
After using Word to generate a table of contents for a paper, report or contract, many people find that a large paragraph of text is mixed into the table of contents, or a bunch of useless titles pop up. In most cases, this is not an error in the operation of generating the table of contents, but a problem with the document itself: some ordinary paragraphs are set as heading styles, or have an outline level. This type of problem is especially common after multiple people collaborate and paste content from web pages or other files.
This article is written for people who already know how to use heading styles, but it gets messed up when the table of contents is updated. After reading, you can determine where the extra content comes from, clean up the sources in order, and then update the table of contents so that only the real chapter titles remain.
Is the extra text or title in the table of contents? One sentence conclusion
Clicking "Update Catalog" directly and repeatedly is usually useless because the catalog is simply regenerated according to the existing style. First use the navigation pane to find the paragraphs that were mistakenly set, change them back to the text style, and confirm that the outline level is correct before updating.
| your situation | Recommended practices | reason |
|---|---|---|
| The table of contents contains the entire text | Find this paragraph and change the style to "Body" or "Body Text" | The paragraph has a heading style or outline level, and the table of contents is included according to it. |
| Figure captions or list items appear in the table of contents | Check styles, captions and lists Do not use heading styles | These paragraphs borrow heading styles |
| Additional titles such as cover, abstract, acknowledgments, etc. | Change to text style, or format the question in a style without outline level | These headings do not belong to chapters and should not be entered into the table of contents |
| Paragraphs look like headings, table of contents doesn't have it | No need to change the appearance, just make sure the style is the text | The table of contents looks at the style and outline level, not the font size and boldness. |
| Many entries suddenly appear after pasting | Paste as unformatted text, or check the style after pasting | The source document brings in the title style |
First determine what kind of problem it is
First, check the table below to find your symptoms and possible causes, and then check them one by one.
| symptoms | Common causes | How to confirm |
|---|---|---|
| The entire text appears in the table of contents | Body paragraph is set to heading style, or outline level is set to levels 1–9 | Place the cursor in the paragraph, look at the name in the style box, and then open the paragraph settings to view the outline level |
| The picture description and the table title appear in the catalog | The caption applies the title style, or the caption is set to the outline level | See if the style name of the row is the "title" class |
| List items or bold clauses become entries | The list item applies the title style, or it is pasted with a style | Open the navigation pane to see if the entry corresponds to the chapter |
| Covers, summaries and thanks appear in the catalogue | These titles use the chapter title style | Compare the location of the entry in the navigation pane |
| The same paragraph sometimes appears and sometimes disappears | The directory domain switch contains an outline level, or the directory domain code has been manually changed | Press Alt+F9 to display the field code and view the switch parameters |
| Item hierarchy disorder | The title is skipped, for example, only title 1 is used but title 3 is used directly. | See if the indentation in the navigation pane is coherent |
# item-by-item troubleshooting and repair
Do it in the following order, usually dealing with the problems that are easy to see before dealing with the problems at the setup level.
- Open the navigation pane and view the entries in the directory one by one. If it should not appear, write down its position in the document. These are the paragraphs you are looking for.
two. Click on each extra entry to see the style name of the paragraph where the cursor is located. If it is "title 1" to "title 9", it means that the style is the source.
- Change the style of the text paragraph back to "text". If there are many similar paragraphs, you can select one of them and use Word's "Select text with similar format" function to select it in batches, and then uniformly change the style.
- Check the outline level of the paragraph. Right-click the paragraph, enter the paragraph settings, and change the outline level to "body text". The style is the text but the outline level is level 1, and it will still be included.
- Clears the residual format. When a paragraph is selected, press Ctrl+Space to clear the character format and Ctrl+Q to clear the paragraph format. Check indentation and line spacing after operation and reset if necessary.
- Check the scope of the catalogue. Confirm the display level in the catalog options, for example, set to level 3, and include only the first three headings. If the directory field code contains the\ u switch, it means that it is included at the paragraph outline level, and the setting of the outline level will directly affect the result.
- Update the catalog. Right-click the directory, perform the operation of updating the domain, and select Update the entire directory from the pop-up options. When only the page number is updated, the extra entries will not be deleted.
- Open the navigation pane again and check that it is consistent with the entries in the directory. If there are still any extra entries, go back to step 2 and continue to find the source.
# how to avoid the next occurrence
-set the style of the text before writing the content. The title only uses the title style, do not use the enlarged, bold text to pretend to be the title. -when copying content from a web page or other document, unformatted paste is preferred. Check it with the navigation pane after pasting. -captions, lists and cover titles use separate styles or body styles, not chapter heading styles. -the chapter level is kept continuous, and the first-level title is followed by the second-level title to avoid skipping. -take a look at the navigation pane before updating the catalog. the problem can be found before the update. -when multi-person collaboration, check the style uniformly before merging documents to reduce the format differences brought by different people.
# frequently asked questions (FAQ)
1. Why does a paragraph look like a title, but it is not in the catalog?
The catalogue is based on the style and outline level of the paragraph, not on font size and bold. If it looks like a title but the style is the body, it will not appear in the catalog.
2. I have changed the style, why is the catalogue still old?
The directory is the result of domain generation and needs to be updated manually. Right-click the directory to perform the update, and select to update the entire directory, and do it after the source change.
3. Why did the deleted entries come back after the update?
Usually there are paragraphs of the same style elsewhere in the document, or the outline level of a paragraph has not changed. Use the navigation pane to check one by one to clean up all remaining sources.
4. How can content copied from a web page or other document be brought into the title style?
Select unformatted text when pasting, or check it with the navigation pane immediately after pasting. If you copy a lot of content, try to paste it to a temporary location, clean up the format and then put it into the body.
# Summary
The Word generation directory brings in the text, mostly because of the wrong style or outline level of the source paragraph. The problem can usually be solved by finding these paragraphs using the navigation pane, changing the style and outline level back to the text, and then updating the entire catalog.
