Table of Content is the most know and the firs thing you see for any book or even a well formatted word document but have you wondered of creating a index for all the tables, figures or images and labels you use in the book or word document ?

I asked a couple of people online and even some technical writer but they said why do we need to create index of it when TOC is there. However this is not the case if you have lot of images or tables which are important it becomes as necessary as TOC to list them at one place. This helps lot of people to find it quickly instead of scanning the whole book for it.This is what exactly is table of Figures

Microsoft Office word ( I am using 2007 ) provides you with an option to create an index like this. Find the menu under References.

Table of figures in word

How to create Table of Figures ?

The main trick is to group all your figures under different labels. The labels are created by when you give caption for the images or tables. Labels make sure you can group related figures together. Right click any image or table and select insert caption. Make sure to create a new label for the first time or use the already created labels further.

Setting caption and Label groups

Creating label groups for caption

Now next step is to select an area where you want to add this list. Click on Insert Table of Figures and then select the label for which you want to create the index and press OK. This will create the list of all the figures with that label and page numbers

Creating Index for Figures

That’s all. Now you can select whichever figure you would feel is important and put it into this index. The only problem I found here was you need to create index for every figure on by one. It doesn’t work like creating TOC but I think this is not met to create a index to include every figure. Just the once which are important.

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How to create table of content ?

Creating table of content is very easy. The only thing you need to do is to keep your word document organized properly. Word takes this hierarchy

H1 > H2 > H3 > H4

So when it creates TOC H1 becomes the topic, H2 will become sub topic under h1 and so on. Here is an example

Creating table of content in MS word

Table of content menu is avaible at the same place where table of figures. Just remember to out it under right heading tabs,]