How to make a summary in Word ?

Your file is finally done and now the only thing left to do is the summary page? You have multiple possibilities: you could write it manually but that would be wasting time, or you could use an automatic summary that you can create in just a few clicks.

Microsoft Word is the word processing application of the Office 365 suite that can create an automatic summary in just a few clicks.

In this article, we are going to teach you how to create an automatic summary in Word.

Step 1: Add a style to your titles and subtitles

To be able to create an automatic summary, you must add a style to the titles and subtitles of your documents. Thanks to styles, we can define its order in the file.

Select the main title
Go to the “Home” tab then select “Heading 1”

The secondary title should be in “Heading 2”, and so on.

If you do not like the style of the title, you can change it to apply your own.

Select the title concerned
Go to the “Home” tab
Select your desired styling in the “A”

Step 2: Create your automatic summary

Position your cursor on the page you wish to have your summary on
Go to the “References” tab

Click on the “Table of Contents” button

Choose the model of summary you like best among those proposed

Select it and the table of contents will appear automatically

You can now go instantly in any part of your document by clicking on its title while pressing the “Ctrl” key on your keyboard

Step 3: Modify the design of the summary

Go to the “References” tab, then click the button “Table of Contents” and finally click on “Custom Table of Contents…”

You can apply changes on the format, the alignment, etc…

Step 4: Update your summary

Click on your summary then activate “Update Table…”
Select “Update page number only” if you modified the number of pages or “Update entire table” if you added, removed, or modified the titles or changed their order.