MS Word Tables and Pagination

Have you ever said this to yourself - “I started adding more content to my document, but had a lot of trouble getting the Table of Contents to look good and have the right page numbers!” Or, “I got quite frustrated trying to keep my own created tables to show correct page numbers whenever I made changes!” Or, “How can I easily keep all page number references within the document correct, and all updated in one process?”

Do any of these sound familiar? Well, first we need to discuss that there are several different types of content in a MS Word document that have page number references. These types fall into two camps – the table and references that Word makes initially by invoking a MS Word process that generates page numbers, and the other camp is all references that MS Word does not create, that you have created on your own.

If you have not delved into this arena much before with using many types of tables and other sources with the tracking of page numbers, this may sound odd. Once explained, this should become quite clear. Keep in mind that if MS Word creates the table, then it will be able to update the page numbers as the content of the document changes, but if you create such yourself, then you must maintain the page numbers yourself. There is no overall general method in MS Word of updating all references to page numbers.

MS Word Managed Tables

There are three main tables that MS Word manages that track page numbers. These are (1) Table of Contents, (2) Table of Figures, and (3) an Index table. To make use of ANY OF these MS Word generated tables requires identifying in the text that this text is to be created and handled by MS Word as one of these tables.

Table of Contents

This is your normal Table of Contents (TOC) which word builds for you. You do get a choice of how it looks. Each line in the TOC will have a page number, and each one of these is linked, which means that you can click on it and it takes you to that spot in the document. You can also make your own Table of Contents besides the one MS Word provides, as I have in my Windows Tutorial document, but this TOC you must manage yourself. MS Word will manage only one TOC per MS Word document. To get Word to repaginate the TOC, you need to tell MS Word to redo the TOC. It will replace the existing TOC. MS Word does not update this automatically without being instructed.

Table of Figures

If you add figures (pictures, graphs, whatever that is non text), .you can attach a description to each (usually below the item) and MS Word will count these for you and allow you to make formal Table of Figures. This is simply a table similar to the TOC, only it lists the figures with its number and description for you. Again, each line here in this table has a link to the page that it is on, and the page number is displayed in the table just as it is done in the TOC – to the right, right justified. Again, you must tell word to redo the Table of Figures if you have made changes to your document that may have impacted the page numbers. It will ask you if you want to replace the existing one, which is almost always ‘yes’.

Index

Word will allow you to create a standard Index, and you have a lot of choice about its appearance. And just like the other MS Word managed tables, you must identify each word in the document that you want to be included in the Index. When identifying each word that is to be indexed, you can select all occurrences of the same word throughout the document, so you do not have to repeat this process for the same word. After making changes to your document, you must then instruct MS Word to remake the index. It will ask you if you want to replace the existing one, which is almost always ‘yes’.

Tables You Create Yourself

As mentioned earlier, you can always augment the TOC with TOCs of your own creation. You may wonder why you would ever do this, but in my Windows Tutorial I created a one-page TOC for quick reference into the document on the first page. This was done because the formal TOC is 15 pages long, and a little bit more time consuming to find something. The one-page TOC is designed to link to parts of the document for items most likely desired. With this one-age TOC, I must manage the pagination myself.

There are many other types of tables you can create that contain page numbers. There is no real limit to this, nor does the data need to be any particular type. Perhaps a somewhat common user created table with page numbers is a table of Endnotes, which I have also done in my Windows Tutorial. Endnotes are simply footnotes, but they are all grouped together in footnote order at the end of the document, which has become quite prevalent in recent years. Each Endnote reference in the text has a link to the actual Endnotes at the end of the document. Creating such a table is simply a list of all the Endnotes, and what page the actual Endnote is on. This table does not keep track or link to where the Endnotes are referenced in the document.

Other tables you may wish to build yourself in the MS Word document are things like a list of graphics you may have in the document, or a list of recommendations you may be giving, or a list of references you have in the document that refer to external links, such as a certain type of web reference that has hot links to the web. There is really no limit to what you may wish to table and give page numbers which are then referenced in the document.

In conclusion, for the tables you created yourself, you must run through each entry in the table and update the page number one at a time in order to keep the pagination correct. This can be as easy as right clicking on the page number in each entry, and select ‘Update field’. For the MS Word managed tables, you only have to ask Word to rebuild the tables, and the page numbers will all be updated for you! There is one way to tell MS Word to do this, which is done by pressing Ctrl+A, then F9.