Working on a long document with Google Docs? Adding a table of contents (TOC) can be a great idea to make it easier for you and your readers to jump between chapters. Google Docs comes with a default feature to effortlessly add a table of contents to your document.

Compared to other document editors like Microsoft Word or LibreOffice Writer, adding a table of contents in Google Docs is way easier. First off, place your cursor anywhere on your document where you want to add the table of contents to. Click the Insert menu and select Table of Contents. Google Docs offers two TOC style options: with page numbers and with blue links. Simply select the one you like.

Google Docs will automatically generate a table of contents. Please note that Google Docs generates the table of contents based on the heading element on your document. So, in order to make the table of contents automatically be generated, you need to add a heading element to each chapter of your document.

When generating the table of contents, Google Docs also automatically format it at once. The higher heading levels are used as the parent table items while the lower heading levels are placed as the sub-table items.

Google Docs doesn’t automatically update the table of contents if you make some changes to the heading elements of your document. You need to manually update the table of contents to apply the new changes to the table of contents. To do so, click the table of contents to turn it into an editing mode and then click the reload icon.

Formating the table of contents

Google Docs treats table of contents just like other texts on your document. To format the table of contents, you can first highlight it and use the toolbar to change the text size, text color, alignment, and so on.