How to Insert a Manual TOC to a MS Word Technical Document

How to Insert a Manual TOC is a skill that may come in handy with some documentation projects.

Did you know that your heading text in a MS Word document and the TOC text (that points at that heading) do not need to be identical?

There’ll be times when you may not want MS Word to automatically copy the text of your standard headings (Heading 1, Heading 2, etc.) as TOC headings.

Sometimes you may want your TOC headings to read differently from the text that they are pointing at.

For example, even though a “Heading 1” style heading reads “Server Configuration“, you may want to refer to that heading in your TOC as “Task Number 1““.

You can accomplish that by inserting a “Manual TOC”.

Follow these steps:

1) Open your MS Word document. Place your cursor where you’d like the TOC to display.

2) Select References tab > Table of Contents > Manual Table:

This will automatically insert a a PLACEHOLDER TOC into your document, at the point where your cursor is:

3) Click on any of the placeholder headings and MS Word will display a ready-to-type text field:

4) Type your own text into each field and you’ll have your own “hand made” TOC, correctly pointing at the selected level of headings in the document: