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Answered By: Michael Pujals
Last Updated: Jan 23, 2019     Views: 75

When you download a document from Google Drive as a Word document the formatting can get a little wonky. For this particular case, creating a table of contents, our main concern is about the style headings.

Normally the style headings show in the Word ribbon as Heading 1, Heading, 2 and so on, but when opening a document that was in Google Drive, often times you can't see the Heading 1 and Heading 2 option (it's usually heading 7). To fix this, in Word 2011 for Mac:

  1. Open your document in Word
  2. Click View > Page Layout
  3. Click View > Styles and a styles dialog box should open up showing all the headings
  4. In your document highlight your top-level heading and choose Heading 1.
  5. For your second-level headings choose Heading 2.

Modify Your Headings

Sometimes your headings need to match a particular document style. In this case we'll use APA styling. In APA the top-level heading is Centered and Boldfaced while second-level headings are Left Justified and Boldfaced (section 3.03 of the APA manual)

To modify your headings to match:

  1. In the Style dialog box that you were using to change your headings mouse over the Heading you want to change. Look for the drop-down menu on the right. Click that and choose Modify Style
  2. For Heading 1 choose Bold and Centered and click OK.
  3. For Heading 2 choose Bold and Left-justified and click OK.
  4. You headings will automatically update

Create your Table of Contents

Your Table of Contents is based off of your style headings so once your style headings are in place then the Table of Contents is easy:

  1. Place your cursor where you want your Table of Contents to show up
  2. Go to your Document Elements tab in the ribbon
  3. Under the section labeled Table of Contents choose the style of table that you want
  4. Your Table  of Contents should appear.

Updating your Table of Contents

If you make changes to your document you may need to update your Table of Contents to reflect those changes. It's simple...

  1. Right click on your table and choose Update Field
  2. You can choose to update just your page numbers or everything (personally I default to everything).
  3. That's it, your table should be updated now.

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