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Dan Rodney/5 min read

Creating a Table of Contents

InDesign Layout Essentials

Master Pages

Recurring layout elements like page numbers, headers, footers.

Paragraph Styles

Reusable type formatting that scales across long documents.

Frames & Threading

Text flows between frames — the heart of multi-column layout.

Object Styles

Reusable formatting for image frames, callout boxes, sidebars.

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Explore this comprehensive InDesign tutorial that covers defining, building, formatting, and updating a table of contents with a hands-on exercise and learn how to create and style the table of contents for a book of French wineries and practice all the steps including making the page for the table of contents, defining and building it, formatting and page numbering, and finally, updating the table of contents.

Topics Covered in This InDesign Tutorial:

Defining & Building a Table of Contents, Formatting & Updating a Table of Contents

Exercise Preview

toc ex prev

Exercise Overview

In this exercise, you’ll create and style the table of contents for a book of French wineries.

  1. Open the file Chapter1.indd.

  2. Save it as: yourname-wine1.indd.

  3. Go to page 2–3 and notice that this document contains a list of French wineries and reviews of their wines. We need to create a Table of Contents indicating each winery’s page number.

    The premise for Table of Contents (TOC) creation is that it’s based on Paragraph Styles. You must use a paragraph style to format the text you want to end up as the content of your TOC.

Making the Page for the Table of Contents

We want to add a page at the beginning of the document for the TOC. But if we do this, the rest of the pages will be adjusted to make room: page 1 would become 2, then 2 would become 3 and so on. This means left-hand pages would become right-hand pages and we don’t want to mess up our spreads. Luckily there is a feature to prevent this.

  1. Go to the Pages panel menu panel menu and uncheck Allow Document Pages to Shuffle.

  2. Now that we don’t need to worry about shifting our document pages around, we can safely go into the Pages panel menu panel menu and choose Insert Pages.

  3. Choose the following options:

    Pages: 1
    Insert: At Start of Document
    Master: T-Table of Contents

    NOTE: While you’re not required to have a master page for the Table of Contents, they often run several pages so you’ll probably want it. We’ve created this one for you.

  4. Click OK.

Defining & Building the Table of Contents

  1. Now that you’re on the new TOC page, go to Layout > Table of Contents.

  2. At the top of the window, delete any text that may be entered for the Title.

  3. From the Other Styles list on the right, choose the winery style sheet and click the << Add button.

    The winery style now appears under the Include Paragraph Styles list on the left.

  4. If you need to, click More Options on the right.

  5. Below are some options under Style: winery. Set the following:

    Entry Style: TOC Body Text
    Page Number: After Entry
    Level: 1

    NOTE: The TOC Body Text style has not yet been created. InDesign will create it for you. In a moment, you will customize the look of it.

  6. Now that we’re done, click OK, but be careful… you’ll now have the text for the Table of Contents loaded in the cursor.

  7. Click in the middle of the page on the primary text frame to flow the TOC into the frame.

Formatting the TOC

  1. The TOC Body Text style that formats the TOC doesn’t make it look very nice, does it? We need to increase the leading and make sure those numbers align better. Deselect everything (Edit > Deselect All).

  2. In the Paragraph Styles panel, double–click the TOC Body Text style to edit it. Don’t click OK until we say so!

  3. On the left, click on Basic Character Formats and set 9 pt size and 13 pt leading.

  4. On the left, click on Tabs and:
    • Click the Right-Justified Tab button right aligned tab button.
    • Click anywhere on the bar above the tab ruler to create a tab marker.
    • With the tab marker still selected, next to X, enter 19p4.
    • Next to Leader, type in a period (.)
    • Click OK.

Page Numbering

When we started out, the title page was page 1 of this book. It’s now page 2, with the TOC as page 1. A typical treatment of the TOC and other “Front Matter, ” as this section is often called, is to number the pages with Roman numerals. After all the front matter, the book’s main content starts on page 1.

  1. In the Pages panel, make sure page 1 is selected.

  2. Go into the Pages panel menu panel menu, choose Numbering & Section Options, and:
    • Select Start Page Numbering at and to its right, enter 1.
    • From the Style menu, choose i, ii, iii, iv.
    • Click OK.

  3. In the Pages panel, select page ii.

  4. From the Pages panel menu panel menu, choose Numbering & Section Options and:
    • Select Start Page Numbering at and to its right, enter 1.
    • From the Style menu, choose 1,2, 3,4.
    • If a Section Prefix was entered, just delete it.
    • Click OK.

  5. You should now have a document with pages i and 1–11, and since the pages are all set, now you can go back into the Pages panel menu panel menu and check on Allow Document Pages to Shuffle.

Updating the Table of Contents

  1. We’ve made a typo. The first winery on page 2 (named ABBAYE DE VALMAGNE) should be ABAYE. Go ahead and delete the extra B now.

  2. Now we need to update the TOC to reflect our change. Go to page i and click in the TOC (or simply select the frame).

  3. Go into Layout > Update Table of Contents.

  4. Your TOC should now be updated. Save and close the file.