Whether you are an author, an editor or just someone who’s company needs to have a proposal set up, it is practically a given that your document will need a table of contents.
However, you may run into one issue. If you set up a Table of Contents using Microsoft Word, then you open the same document up in OpenOffice.org Writer, you will find that your TOC is gone. Understandably, this could be very frustrating and can really through you for a loop!
But, not to worry. If you haven’t edited a Word Table of Contents in OOo yet, here is the way to go about it. Best of all, while you’ll be able to use the new TOC you’ve created in OOo without having to worry about doing it all over again!
As you can see when you open your Word file in Writer, there is a gray box where your entire Table of Contents used to be. However, the table’s format is still in the file, which you can see by right-clicking and selecting Edit Index/Table.
Once you get to the dialog box, you’ll notice that unless you are looking to have the hyperlink embedded into the font, you will want to remove the hyperlink, which you will do by clicking on the Hyperlink button (| F), and pressing Delete.
Next, go to the chapter title you wish to use.
When you get the highlight chapter, pull down the highlighted drop-down and select Heading 1. You will need to change the font and paragraph style, which you can do by right-clicking and selecting Edit Paragraph Style.
Once you’ve finished re-formatting your chapter title, go ahead an go back to the Table of Contents, right-click on the gray section and select Update Index/Table, and here’s the end product:
After you have the first section to your liking, you can go ahead and repeat it with the rest of your chapters. And, again, don’t forget your new Table of Contents will work in Word as well!
