Insert a Table of Contents

Intro

At various places in this Site, you will see a table of contents appear, just like the one on the right. These are easy to create and are useful when you have a lot of content on the page. It helps your readers get to the content they need quickly without having to scan and scroll down the page.

Styles

Using styles on your page is key to creating a Table of Contents. On the page dealing with Editing a page, styles are described as a way of adding consistent formatting to your pages. Styles have two other uses, both based on navigation and finding your way around a page.

Accessibility

Visually impaired readers may use a screen reader to convert your text to audio. This is more common than you may think and just because you don't have anybody in your class who presents as 'blind' doesn't mean that some of your learners don't have visual difficulties. Screen readers use the styles on the page to attach relative importance to parts of the page so that readers can move through it with speed and again, find what they need quickly. We do that visually with styles too, with higher style levels being in bigger and bolder fonts.

Table of Contents

Because styles impart relative importance to sections of text we also use them to create tables of contents. Less important sections (sub-sections) will normally appear indented in a table of contents. You can visually tell that a sub-section is related to its parent section by this layout.

Creating a Table of Contents

Applying styles

For all of the major sections on a page, apply the same heading style. On this page, I have applied Heading 2 to the three major parts of this text. Under the Styles section, I have applied Heading 3 to two sub-sections. Editing a page has more details on using styles for formatting. To apply a style to some text, place the cursor in the text you want to format, and from the Format menu, select the style that you need.

Inserting the Table of Contents

Once your page is formatted, place the cursor where you want the Table of Contents to appear. I have tried to consistently place mine at the top of the right hand column in this Site.

Select Insert and then Table of Contents.

In the dialogue that appears, leave the defaults as they are and click Save.

A placeholder for the Table of Contents will appear. Save the page that you are editing and you will be able to read the Table of Contents. Each entry will be a link to that section of the text, so clicking on it will take you straight to the bit you are interested in.

Try it in the Table of Contents on this page!