Table of Contents from many documents

[Guest]

Is it possible to construct a Table of Contents that is built from more than
one document? In other words, say I have written a book and I have each
chapter in a different Word document. Can I create a TOC that accesses all of
these chapter documents? Or can a TOC only use the Headers and other markers
within its own document? In other words, would I have to merge all the
chapter documents into one document in order to build a TOC for the all? Or
is there a way to access them in some other way?

Thanks for the help.

Jo

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You can indeed create a TOC for multiple documents; see Creating a Table of
Contents Spanning Multiple Documents
http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMArticle.asp?ID=148

Note, however, that the most efficient procedure is to combine your chapters
into a single document. Unless your computer is sadly unspecced or your
document contains many very large images, Word will be able to handle the
book as a single file, and it will be much easier to keep your styles and
formatting consistent throughout, create a TOC and index, have continuous
page numbering, etc. Users have reported creating documents upwards of
10,000 pages in Word, and I doubt that your book is that long!

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Guest]

Thanks Suzanne!

Jo

You can indeed create a TOC for multiple documents; see Creating a Table of
Contents Spanning Multiple Documents
http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMArticle.asp?ID=148

Note, however, that the most efficient procedure is to combine your chapters
into a single document. Unless your computer is sadly unspecced or your
document contains many very large images, Word will be able to handle the
book as a single file, and it will be much easier to keep your styles and
formatting consistent throughout, create a TOC and index, have continuous
page numbering, etc. Users have reported creating documents upwards of
10,000 pages in Word, and I doubt that your book is that long!

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Guest]

Oops! I spoke too soon. Now I'm having problems inserting the RD field. When
I use Insert --> Field, enter the filename and everything and then press OK,
nothing is inserted. I've also tried manually inserting it by pressing
Ctrl-F9 to get the field brackets, but as soon as I type RD the whole field
suddenly just disappears -- just gone! The TOC field code is showing up okay.
I have my Options set to show the Field codes. So I don't know what I'm doing
wrong. Help please! Thanks.

Jo

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

The RD field may be hidden text; I've never actually used this field, so I'm
afraid I can't help much if you can't get the desired results by following
the instructions in the article. I would again suggest you combine the
chapters into a single document.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Guest]

Ya, that's weird. According to the article, that field should still show a
visible code.

I agree that combining the chapters would be the easiest way. However, this
is a series of documents that someone else has compiled and I don't know how
strict they've been about using the same styles across all documents. I guess
I'll find out. ;-) Thanks for your help!

Jo