Automatic Table of Contents in Microsoft Word

There is a feature provided by MS Word that lets you create an Table of Contents for your Word document automatically.

To use this feature for other documents there are two steps involved,
  1.  Prepare your document for a table of contents (here you have to highlight which text
       in your document will appear in the table of contents please read the rest of the article
       to know how to do this.)
  2.  Insert the automatic table of contents in your document.

To achieve this please use following steps

For MS Word 2003

Prepare your document for a table of contents :
   1.  On the View menu, point to Toolbars, and click Outlining.
   2.  Select the first heading that you want to appear in the table of contents.
   3.  On the Outlining toolbar, select the outline level that you want to associate with the selected paragraph.
   4.  Repeat steps 2 and 3 for each heading that you want to include in the table of contents.

Insert the automatic table of contents :
   5.  Click where you want to insert the table of contents.
   6.  Go to Insert >> Reference >> Index and Tables  
   7.  Click the Table of Contents tab.
   8.  To use one of the available designs, click a design in the Formats box.
   9.  Select any other table of contents options you want.
 10.  Press Update TOC
 11.  Choose Update the whole documents and not just the page.  In this case it will update
        the page numbers in the Index and Tables.


For MS Word 2007

Prepare your document for a table of contents :
   1.  Select the first heading that you want to appear in the table of contents.
   2.  Click anywhere within the text, and then, on the Home tab in the Styles group, click the
        Heading 1, Heading 2, or Heading 3 style. The text becomes a heading. The heading numbers
        correspond to outline levels: Heading 3 is a sub-level of Heading 2, which is a sub-level of
        Heading 1. Your choice of heading number depends on how you want to organize your document.
   3.  Continue writing your document and adding headings using the built-in heading styles.

Insert the automatic table of contents :
   4.  Go to References Ribbon >> Table of Contents
   5.  Click Insert Table of Contents
   6.  To use one of the available designs, click a design in the Formats box.
   7.  Select any other table of contents options you want.
   8.  Press Update TOC
   9.  Choose Update the whole documents and not just the page.  In this case it will update
        the page numbers in the Index and Tables.