How to Create a Table of Contents in InDesign

Working in Adobe InDesign and your document needs a table of contents? Before you set off to create one by hand, wait a minute! There's a much easier way to do it! Did you know that InDesign can render a table of contents for you? Well, in this tutorial, we'll show you how to do it!

It might be tempting to create your table of contents from scratch—for example, you could set your text and add the numbers, all by hand. It works. You could do it that way, and there's nothing wrong with that. It can just be a tedious process, especially if you're working with a long document.

However, there's a much easier way to do it—why manually manage your table of contents when Adobe InDesign can do the heavy lifting for you? This way, for example, if pages need to be shifted, changed, or rearranged, you don't have to go through the headache of manually editing your table of contents. This can be particularly handy when building InDesign templates!

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[davidbullock]

Just creating my first training manual using InDesign 2021. It needed a ToC so went on YouTube as many do looking for a tutorial on this. I find it easier to view and listen to learn. Your video is very good as it has good pace and demonstration of work through. Thanks so much.

[notsrynot]

This is exactly what I was looking for. Most other tutorials on table of contents assume you understand paragraph styles and you explain this perfectly thank you

[denisZsuave]

wow, this tutorial has really saved me a ton of work. Thank you

[rachelkrats]

My first assignment for my online print and web course is taking a table of contents from a magazine and duplicating it through indesign so this was extremely helpful

[Moniek]

Thanks for sharing! A perfect explanation

[zuzanadobiasova]

Fantastic work. I have been trying to master this for a long time, but without any success, but this tutorial made it all clear. Thank you ever so much.

[KaptainCanuck]

Simplistic, as stated. Works great for chapters. subheadings and such that have no numbering associated with them. It becomes 5x more difficult when you have, for example, Chapter 1, subchapters 1.x+, subchapter 1.x.x+. The spacing in those numbers is NEVER equal to what is in the actual headings and is NOT easily figured out on how to align them next to the titles. It also should work for figure AND table references numbered as 1.x, 2.x, etc with the first numeral being the chapter number. and the second being the figure in the chapter.

[indranin]

got a little bit confused because of the names you gave to the styles so had to rewatch it but really a helpful video that reduces a lot of time

[rebelllion]

You are a great teacher ! Every time I was looking how to do something with InD with was an unknown for me, your tutorials came and I leared !
Thank you so much for helping me in my reconversion !
If I can do something for you, just say it ;)

[mariannabotti]

straightforward, simplified and fast! thank you!

[ImbaliCrafts]

Thank you for this very helpful video! I am struggling a bit with the alignment of the numbers! My numbers aren't left aligned like yours, but stick to my TOC content to the right making it look untidy. Could you possibly tell me how to left align the text, and right align the corresponding page numbers please? Thanks so much!

[rgarlinyc]

great, thanks a ton! - I had this on my (never ending) list of "Things I need to Figure Out Soon"...👍😀

[jonasderijker]

This explains the styling, not the automatic content creation of the TOC?

[pandagamer]

Thank you for making this video, I found it very helpful.

[goteamslugs]

Thank you! God bless and have a nice day! =)

[nardywardy]

Is the generate table of contents available if I create an indesign file as a new document or must I create the file as a new book?

[thejenstreet]

Hi. I was wondering how to get the style: Heading 1 # the dots before the page #. So the dots leading from the heading to the page #. I'm not seeing that as an option. Thanks

[mindyjol]

Can you explain how you get the different chapter names in the footer? When I created a text box in my Parent, I couldn’t change the contents of it in my pages (because it’s in the master).

[flyloseed.mp]

Thank you for your tutorial but I need help with my page numbers not showing up. I put all the paragraph styles necessary and the page numbers don’t show up.

[gavinbevan]

Thank you for the tutorial. It was explained very well.