Make Word 365 Table of Contents ignore annexed document

I am currently writing my graduation thesis and it is a requirement to annex side documents to the main document.

The problem is: These annexed documents are documents of their own. They have their own header, footer and page number (not in line with the pages of the main document).

I can easily handle the page numbering with section breaks, but I am having the issue that when I update the table of contents of the main document, it automatically lists and numbers the pages in the annexed document as well.

For example, my document is 100 pages long, and on Page 101 I insert the first annexed document (2 pages long) and in 102 I insert the second annexed document (3 pages long)

The table of contents ends up looking like this (the ALL CAPS titles represent titles present in the annexed documents).

Introduction.......1
Development........10
Analysis...........50
Conclusions........90
Annex number 1............101
INTRODUCTION..............1
DATA EVALUATION...........2
Annex Number 2............102
INTRODUCTION..............1
DATA EVALUATION...........2
CONCLUSIONS...............3

When I want it to just look like this

Introduction.......1
Development........10
Analysis...........50
Conclusions........90
Annex number 1............101
Annex number 2............102

(I understand that some people may argue whether it should be page 102 or page 104, this is a separate discussion unrelated to the issue at hand, the issue is that the TOC is showing the contents of the annexed docs as well)

Solution 1:

Use the \b switch to set your TOC for only a portion of the document.

A Table of Contents is a Field. You can edit it to tell it to look only within a certain section within a bookmark.

Select the part of your document you want in your TOC and add a bookmark for that part.

Then, edit the TOC field so that it is limited to that text.

See TOC Tips and Tricks by Word MVP Suzanne Barnhill.

Insert a bookmark

The general principle here is that you have to have some way to tell Word what part of the document you want each TOC to cover. To do that, you select the text you want included in the TOC (an entire chapter, for example) and insert a bookmark.

• Word 2003 and earlier: On the Insert menu, click Bookmark and type in a name for your bookmark.

• Word 2007 and above: On the Insert tab, in the Links group, click Bookmark and type in a name for your bookmark.

The bookmark name can be any text you like, but it can’t contain spaces. So, for example, you can’t use “Chapter 1,” but you can use “Chapter1” or “Chapter_1.” Insert a TOC field

After you have created the bookmark, you insert a TOC field at the desired place (at the beginning of the chapter, say).

Helpful Hint: Give some thought to this. If you have used Heading 1 for your chapter titles, then of course you don’t want the chapter title included in your chapter TOC, so you will want to omit Level 1 from your TOC. Perhaps you’ll include just Levels 2 and 3. So in the Table of Contents Options dialog you’ll delete the 1 from beside Heading 1.

But also think about formatting; unless you want the entire TOC to be indented, you don’t want to use the TOC 2 style (which by default has a 0.17″ indent) for Level 2. To get around this, type 1 by Heading 2 and 2 by Heading 3 so that the next-higher TOC style will be used for each heading style.

Edit the TOC field

After you have inserted the TOC (which at this point will contain many more entries than you want), you will have to edit it by hand. So press Alt+F9 to toggle the display from field results to field code. If you have not changed any of the default options except the levels as described above, the field you have inserted will look like this:

{ TOC \h \z \u \t "Heading 2,1,Heading 3,2" }

If you want this TOC to cover your first chapter, which you have bookmarked as “Chapter1,” then you will type “\b Chapter1” into the field so it looks like this:

{ TOC \b Chapter1 \h \z \u \t "Heading 2,1,Heading 3,2" }

Press Alt+F9 again to toggle back to the field results, then F9 to update the field, which should now show only the headings from Chapter 1.