hide an entry from Toc in latex

Question

I would like to know how I can hide a section from the table of contents but without loosing the section number in the body of the document. For example, in this tex file I loose the number for hide, and all the sequences are damaged:

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}
\tableofcontents
\section{uno}
\section{dos}
\section*{hide}
\section{tres}
\end{document}

Solution 1

I think you are looking for

\section*{hide}
\addtocounter{section}{1}

or make it into a command:

\newcommand{\toclesssection}[1]{\section*{#1}\addtocounter{section}{1}}

EDIT:

Okay, I think I understand what is wanted now (and it makes more sense then the answer I gave). Here is a command that you can use to suppress adding a section, subsection, etc. to the TOC. The idea is to temporarily disable \addcontentsline.

\newcommand{\nocontentsline}[3]{}
\newcommand{\tocless}[2]{\bgroup\let\addcontentsline=\nocontentsline#1{#2}\egroup}
...
\tocless\section{hide}
\tocless\subsection{subhide}

Solution 2

Just wanted to say thanks for Ivans great hint! (I was just googling for something similar for my customized (Sub)Appendix{} commands:

\newcommand{\nocontentsline}[3]{}
\newcommand{\tocless}[2]{\bgroup\let\addcontentsline=\nocontentsline#1{#2}\egroup}

\newcommand{\Appendix}[1]{
  \refstepcounter{section}
  \section*{Appendix \thesection:\hspace*{1.5ex} #1}
  \addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Appendix \thesection}
}
\newcommand{\SubAppendix}[1]{\tocless\subsection{#1}}

Maybe this is useful for someone else, too...)

Solution 3

have just come here from a similar question. The answer above didn't quite work as it gave some formatting issues, but a similar solution seemed to do the trick

Comments

[mjsr]

it will be nice also ommit the page number in the right..i just need SectionName.................SectionNumber SectionName2................SectionNumber2 ...etc.

[Geoff]

OP said "without losing the section number in the body"

[mjsr]

the problem remains and appear other incongruency. in Toc the section tres has the number 3, in the body has the number 4.

[Ivan Andrus]

Sorry, I misunderstood what was wanted.

[mjsr]

mmm I don't understand the logic in the set of command, can you give me a hint in English?...im trying to use the tocless command but doesn't work.

[Ivan Andrus]

Dang it! I forgot to add the \nocontentsline command. I don't know what my problem is. Anyway, the idea is to set \addcontentsline to a no-op when evaluating the \section command.

[Nathan VanHoudnos]

A small improvement: to reference the hidden sections elsewhere in the document you need to add the \label inside of the group. For example, \newcommand{\toclesslab}[3]{\bgroup\let\addcontentsline=\noc‌​ontentsline#1{#2\lab‌​el{#3}}\egroup} will fix it. Usage: \toclesslab\section{Motivation}{s:motivation} will keep the section from appearing the TOC, but you can still reference it with \ref{s:motivation} or similar.

[deceleratedcaviar]

See stackoverflow.com/a/3805470/431528 for an answer which doesn't cause formatting issues.

[Sickboy]

thanks! works like a charm for subsubsections as well :-)

[Richard DiSalvo]

my opinion is the EDIT should be first in this answer - in short, define \tocless then use it in front of whatever