Can a TOC Be Generated From Headings in a Different Document?

[jqavins]

I'm stuck now (it's too late to do this better) manually updating a table of contents, because someone before me did not use the tools Word offers. The document is one volume of a technical manual with multilevel section numbering, and whoever created it originally did not use automatic numbering. So when I had to add a section, I needed to manually renumber all of the following sections at the same level. Which is 100% stupid, and I'm stuck with it.



They also put the table of contents for this in a separate file. That's not as stupid as it sounds, as this other file has a bunch of standard front matter, and that's the system in use for each volume: there's the file for front matter, the file for the body, and two more files for trailing matter and customer submission stuff.

Naturally, after a bunch of section numbers and nearly all of the page numbers changed, I have to manually update the table of contents. Argh!

OK, so here's the question. Hypothetically, if the body had been done correctly, would it have been possible to automatically generate the body's TOC from within the front matter file?

[Stefan Blom]

In the document that contains the table of contents, you can insert RD fields that reference each of the separate documents from which Word should fetch the headings.
See Field codes: RD (Referenced Document) field - Microsoft Support.

A simpler way is to reference the separate documents with INCLUDETEXT fields, though. You can use the Insert File dialog box and especially the Insert as Link option.