Word is quite flexible when it comes to Table of Contents (TOC) as it allows you to base its generation to either styles or table entry fields (Insert à Field à TC).

The first is the option that is most commonly used, as documents tend to be logically spit into distinct parts which have their own heading. Applying a specific style to those headings means that you can use all instances of this style to generate the TOC. This method stops working when the way the document is structured is not consistent with the way you want to TOC to be generated or when you want the TOC to include parts of the document that do not have a specific style applied to them.

This is where table entry fields come in. They can be placed anywhere in the document and they can contain any text that you like. They can even be associated with an outline level (i.e. which level in the hierarchy they belong to). In other words, it is like planting hidden headings within the document.

However, there are two main issues with table entry fields

1. When “Show all formatting marks” are turned on the user can see them, which can be annoying to a power user that uses this option but is not interested in the table entry fields, and can also edit them either by mistake or on purpose. One way or the other, a lot of responsibility is placed on the hands of the user for keeping the table of entry fields intact.
2. They are inline with text. If you place a table entry field between two words, selecting the two words and deleting them will also delete the table entry field. Clearly this can be an issue as it restricts the users’ ability to edit the document freely.

If you are in a situation where basing the TOC on styles or table entry fields is not an option, your only true alternative is the generating your own. By keeping track of the parts of the document that are of interest (e.g. using Smart Documents and XML tags to annotate the content of the document) you can generate a TOC of contents that looks and functions the same as well the TOC generated by Word, but this time you are not restricted to using styles or table entry fields.

Manually creating a TOC requires being able to do or having access to the following

1. Titles that will be the entries of the TOC
2. Creating hyperlinks so that users can CTRL+CLICK on a TOC entry and be taken to the part of the document the entry corresponds to
3. The page number that a part of the document starts at
4. Being able to align the page numbers differently than the titles and have some sort of spacing between them (e.g. white space, dots, etc.)

Titles that will be entries of the TOC

This one depends on the source of information that your TOC will be based upon, but should be quite easy. In the case of using Smart Documents and XML tags, you can have an XML attribute in each XML node that needs to be part of the TOC that has the value that will appear in the TOC. When the TOC is being generated, XPath can be used to retrieve all of the required attributes very efficiently.

Creating hyperlinks so that users can CTRL+CLICK on a TOC entry and be taken to the part of the document the entry corresponds to

This is not as straight forward as it sounds; it might not be technically very challenging, but it is not straight forward. First of all you need a bookmark to base the hyperlink on. Bookmarks can easily be added to a document using the following line of code

Globals.ThisDocument.Bookmarks.Add("BookmarkName", ref range);

However, bookmarks are visible within the document and since power users might also use them, the situation is not much different to using table entry fields. By prefixing the name of the bookmark with “_” the bookmark is added as “hidden”, meaning that it won’t be visible within the document and unless the user explicitly wants hidden bookmarks to be displayed they won’t even appear in the “Bookmarks” window (Insert à Bookmark).

Having the bookmark is half the battle; the rest is creating a hyperlink based on the bookmark. First you add the hyperlink to the document using the following code

object bookmarkRange = Globals.ThisDocument.Range(ref start, ref end);

object bookmarkSubAddress = SubsectionManager.GetBookmarkName("_BookmarkName");

object bookmarkScreenTip = "Mouse over text";

Globals.ThisDocument.Hyperlinks.Add(bookmarkRange, ref missing,

    ref bookmarkSubAddress, ref bookmarkScreenTip, ref missing, ref missing);

Then you need to style the TOC entry accordingly. You will probably have a style that you would like to apply to the range of the bookmark, but it is not as easy as that. Adding a hyperlink to the document will automatically apply the built-in “Hyperlink” style to the specified range. Applying your own style after adding the hyperlink will not override the hyperlink settings for font and its properties (i.e. blue colour, underline, etc.). The way around this is to create a style that is based on the built-in “Hyperlink” style but has the font properties you want the TOC entry to have. If it is still necessary you can apply your own style on top of the custom “Hyperlink” based style without issues, applying more formatting to the TOC entry.

object styleName = "Style TOC1 Hyperlink";

((Range)bookmarkRange).set_Style(ref styleName);

styleName = "Style TOC1";

((Range)bookmarkRange).set_Style(ref styleName);

The page number that a part of the document starts at

This might not be immediately obvious, but it is actually pretty simple. The object “Range” has a method called “get_Information()” that can take a number of parameters, one of which being the page number the specific range ends at. Since for the TOC entry the page number that a range starts are is required, a new range that starts and ends at the beginning of the original range can be used to get this information as shown below

object start = ((Range)bookmarkRange).Start;

Word.Range range = Globals.ThisDocument.Range(ref start, ref start);

range.get_Information(WdInformation.wdActiveEndAdjustedPageNumber);

When using page numbers that have been adjusted (e.g. the count starts from 2, the count actually starts from page 4 of the document, etc.) make sure you use WdInformation.wdActiveEndAdjustedPageNumber instead of WdInformation.wdActiveEndPageNumber.

Being able to align the page numbers differently than the titles and have some sort of spacing between them (e.g. white space, dots, etc.)