I have an academic thesis, with all the headings and numbers painstakingly set up, but every time I try to insert a TOC, Word becomes unresponsive. When I close the program, the recovered document says "No TOC entries found!"

Any suggestions?

Have you tried repairing the Office installation (via Windows Control Panel > Programs > Programs & Features > Microsoft Office (version) > Change > Repair)?

It's also possible the document has acquired some of corruption. Corrupt documents can often be 'repaired' by inserting a new, empty, paragraph at the very end, copying everything except that new paragraph to a new document based on the same template (headers & footers may need to be copied separately), closing the old document and saving the new one over it.

Also, don't use the Table of Contents tool found on the Ribbon's References tab. The way that tools inserts a Table of Contents imposes a severe performance hit on documents with lots of headings. Use TOC field you can insert via Insert|Quick Parts|Field instead.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

I've already tried the 'new document" approach. I'll try the TOC field. Thanks.

Same result. And the repair option doesn't appear on my version of Win 10.

Another error message is saying it can't open "Built.in.Buliding.Blocks.dotx" (not sure if all those dots were in there. Does that mean anything to you?

See: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...-the-office-op and https://www.msofficeforums.com/word/...locations.html

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]