Table of Contents based on numbered lists

Question

I have a large document formatted with lists (numbered items) and I need to create a table of content based on these lists. The problem is that there is no heading style used so regular TOC doesn't work since it doesn't take lists into consideration.

I noticed that Cross-refference shows something similar I need for TOC. Is it possible to create table of content like this?

Solution

Yes, you can create a custom TOC that's based on the paragraph style(s) that are used for your various list items. Here's how to do it in Word 2016.

Scenario 1: If you manually applied a separate, specially named paragraph style to the paragraphs at each list level (for example, if items 1 and 2 in your screenshot use Word's built-in List Number style, items 2.1 through 2.5 use the built-in List Number 2 style, and items 2.5.1 through 2.5.5 use the List Number 3 style), follow these steps.

1. On the References tab, in the Table of Contents group, click Table of Contents > Custom Table of Contents.
2. In the Table of Contents dialog box, if you don't want page numbers to appear in your TOC, clear the Show page numbers check box.
3. Click Options.
4. Scroll down the Available styles list until you reach the heading styles (Heading 1, Heading 2, and so on). Clear out any numbers in the TOC level field for these and other styles.
5. Enter an appropriate number in the TOC level field for each paragraph style that you're using for your lists (for example, enter 1 in the field for the List Number style, 2 in the field for List Number 2, and 3 in the field for List Number 3).
6. Click OK twice to insert the TOC.
7. If the indents and spacing of the paragraphs in the TOC aren't what you want, adjust the appropriate paragraph styles that are used for the TOC (by default, TOC 1, TOC 2, and so on).

Scenario 2: If you manually applied a single specially named paragraph style to all list items and then created the various list levels by, e.g., adding indents, repeat the previous procedure, but enter a number in the TOC level field just for that single paragraph style.

In this case, when the TOC is inserted, the same TOC paragraph style will be used for all of the paragraphs by default (for example, the TOC 1 style if you entered 1 in the TOC level field). Therefore, if you want lower list levels to be indented in the TOC, you must either manually indent them or manually apply different TOC paragraph styles to the individual TOC paragraphs. Note, though, that if you ever do a full update of the TOC, all those manual changes will be lost, and you'll have to redo them.

Scenario 3: If you didn't manually apply any specially named paragraph styles at all to your list items, but just added numbering to Word's default paragraph style (Normal), click in one of the list paragraphs, and then, on the Home tab, open the Styles pane. If Normal shows up as the style that's applied, go to File > Options > Advanced, and then, under Editing options, clear the Use Normal style for bulleted or numbered lists check box. The paragraph style that's applied to your list items should now show up as something like List Paragraph,Ref.

Now repeat the previous steps, but enter a number in the TOC level field just for the List Paragraph,Ref style.

Once again, if you want different indents for the various list levels, you have to add them manually, and those manual changes will be lost every time that you do a full update of the TOC.