If you want to revisit the Index and Tables dialog box without
actually creating a new TOC, you must delete the existing TOC first;
then you can recreate it with different settings.

Hmm, that's seems a bit self-contradictory; if you delete the existing TOC,
then you *must* create a new one.

Usually, however, it
is quite sufficient to *update* the existing TOC to reflect changes in
your document.

Not if you want to change the TOC itself (include more levels, omit some
headings). Updating merely changes the TOC, as is, to reflect the current
document content. If that content includes Level 1 paragraphs that you don't
want in the TOC, there are ways to deal with this outside the TOC dialog,
but the easiest way is to clear the 1 from the style in the TOC Options
dialog.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"Stefan Blom" wrote in message
...
If you want to revisit the Index and Tables dialog box without
actually creating a new TOC, you must delete the existing TOC first;
then you can recreate it with different settings. Usually, however, it
is quite sufficient to *update* the existing TOC to reflect changes in
your document.

In order to force an update of a table of contents, do the following:
right-click the TOC and choose to "Update field" (or, alternatively,
place the cursor inside the TOC and press F9). If Word presents a
dialog box, make sure that you specify that the entire table should be
updated.

--
Stefan Blom


"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote in message
...
I believe your problem lies in "when I reopen the dialog box to
specify the
TOC entries." You basically can't revisit this dialog. When you do,
Word
wants to create a new TOC from scratch, so everything is always set
back to
the default. You need to either get it right the first time or learn
to edit
the TOC field manually; see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/TOCSwitches.htm

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"Annamarie Pluhar" wrote in message
...
Hi

Thanks for responding. I've made progress and if my stupid
mistakes can
help
anyone else out I'm confessing. Mind you I'm working with a
document that
I
inherit from a colleague.

"Stick" in the sense that I specify the TOC entries for the styles
and the
levels I want, (Insert/Tables and Indexes/Table of
Contents/Options)
click
OK, and when I reopen the dialog box to specify the TOC entries
they
aren't
there. I've done this over and over. However, I missed noticing
that
while
I was defining the styles "Chapter Title" and Chapter Sub-title"
the
Header
1, Header 2 and Header 3 were already assigned to TOC 1, 2 and 3
respectively.

Next problem is said colleague defined Chapter Subtitle with left
and
right
indents that caused a single column of characters to be the TOC 2
entry.

Once I figured that out it's been working fine.

Thanks.


"Jezebel" wrote in message
...


TOC function won't work at all. Is this because I don't have
the .dot
file
for the file on my computer?
Every time I try to set TOC levels they don't "stick".

Stick in what sense? No, you don't need the DOT file on your
computer.
Specify the TOC entries using styles with the levels you want
(eg use
Heading 1, Heading 2, etc). Define the TOC styles to look the
way you
want.
That's all there is for a vanilla TOC.


Colleague also tells me that the doc adds continuous section
breaks
for
no
reason that he can find. I don't know what his skill level is,
but he
said
he was on phone with MS for 2 hours. Perhaps he simply has a
broken/buggy
template?

Word doesn't add section breaks for *no* reason. (The reason
might be
obscure, but there will be one ... although it's not a problem
I've ever
encountered.) Whatever the cause, it has nothing to do with his
template.