One of the most frustrating things that I have seen people deal with in Word documents is when they try to work with a Table of Contents. Word has a really nice way to take a document that you have created and automatically generate a Table of Contents. A little planning ahead will make this process a lot simpler. In this tutorial, I will show you how to generate a Table of Contents automatically.

The first thing that you need to know about creating an easy Table of Contents in Word is the use of Style. Word has a Style Gallery on the ribbon where you can apply styles to your text. Take a look at the picture below to see an example of the Style Gallery.

To make the Table of Contents easy to automate, we need to use Heading styles. You’ll notice in the picture above that I have my chapter Title and I am picking Heading 1 from the Style Gallery. This will guarantee its inclusion in the automatic Table of Contents that I will create later. If I wanted to add a subheading, I would pick Heading 2, instead. Now if you’re following along with this tutorial, you may have noticed that Word 2010 can hide the other heading styles. Here is how you can get them into your Style Gallery. In the bottom right corner of the Styles group on the ribbon, there is a tiny arrow. Click that arrow and you will see the menu pictured below.

To add the other heading style we need to click the Manage Styles button at the bottom of this menu. You will see the menu pictured below.

Click the heading styles you wish to add. By default they will have “hide until used” selected. To eliminate this, click the “Show” button at the bottom of the window and click OK. You will now have the additional heading options in your Style Gallery. Now you can add the Heading 2 style to your subheadings if you have them.

Once you have all of your headings typed, it is time to insert the Table of Contents. To do this, we have to click the References tab on the ribbon. I recommend making sure that you are in the exact spot where you want this added your document when you start this. Pictured below, you will see that you click the Table of Contents button and then choose from the available Table of Contents options. I chose Automatic Table 2.

You will now see the Table of Contents at the cursor in your document with the fields automatically populated, as pictured below.

Notice that the words labeled with Heading 1 are aligned left and the Heading 2 words are indented. Word automatically picks up on these headings based on those styles that we picked earlier. One big mistake that I have seen people make when making a Table of Contents is thinking that merely making a word bold will make it show up. This simply isn’t the case. Use the heading styles. It will make life much easier.

There are other ways that you can insert a Table of Contents. One reason you might want to do it differently is if you don’t want the subheadings to show up. This is pretty easy to do. First, let’s remove the Table of Contents. If you click in the table, you will get a little menu at the top of the table. On the left side of the menu, there is a white sheet of paper with an arrow beside it. Click the arrow and then click Remove Table of Contents to remove it. Now, let’s click the Table of Contents button on the ribbon and look way down at the bottom. Pictured below, click the option that says Insert Table of Contents.

You will get the dialog box pictured below.

One thing I would like to point out to you is at the bottom of the dialog box. The “show levels” setting is currently set to 3. If you only want to see the top-level headings in your Table of Contents then set this option to 1. Pictured below, you can see that my table now only shows the Heading 1 text.

So what if you add more headings later? It is very simple to add those pages to the table. Simply right-click inside the table and choose the “Update Field” option from the menu. A dialog box will ask you whether you want to update the page numbers or the entire table. Choose the option to “Update entire table”, as pictured below.

I hope this tutorial will save you some pain down the road. There are other ways to get a Table of Contents into your document, but I have found that this is the simplest way by far. Now you can go write that great novel you’ve been putting off and put your new skills to work. Good luck and thank you for reading Techie Buzz!

Have you ever tried to come up with one of those cool organizational charts only to discover that it can be a real pain to do? All of the rectangles and lines going in every direction can get a little frustrating. A lot of people use a program like Visio to get this done. Visio is nice, but it can be a little complicated to use. Never fear, this tutorial will show you an easy way to create organizational charts in Word.

First things first; let’s open up Word 2010. Doing an organizational chart in Word requires a new feature called “SmartArt”. This is a great new feature in the Office 2010 family. To insert “SmartArt” into the Word document, click the “Insert” tab, and then click “SmartArt”. See the picture below for an example.

Once you click on “SmartArt”, you will see several options. In the picture below, you can see that there are several categories of “Smart Art”. The one that we will be using in this tutorial is filed under “Hierarchy”. We are going to use the one labeled “Picture Organization Chart”. I really like this chart because it not only lets you show the hierarchy, but it also let’s you add a person’s picture beside their name.

Once you have selected the picture organization chart, click OK. You will now see the screen pictured below.

Notice that you get several options when you insert the chart. At the top of the screen there is a “SmartArt Tools” tab with many options on the toolbar below. In the body of the document, you will see a small chart ready for you to fill in. To the left of the chart, you will see a window where you can type the text you want in each block of the chart. You will notice, above, that I typed my name in the first block. You can continue typing and the font will get smaller to fit in the block. There is also a small picture icon located to the left of the name block. If you click the icon, a dialog box will appear where you can insert the person’s picture in the block. See the example below to see how this looks.

You have a lot of options for changing the appearance of the organizational chart. If you want to add additional subordinates under a person, right-click their name on the chart, then find the “add shape” option from the menu that pops up, and finally, click where you want the new block to go. In this case, since we want a subordinate, we would choose “Add Shape Below”. See the picture below for an example.

By default, this chart was blue, however, there are many choices so you are not stuck with that color. If you look at the toolbar at the top of the page, you will see that you can change the layouts and the colors. Pictured below, you will see an example of some of the color changes you can make to your chart. Notice that as you mouse over the different options, the chart changes to show you how it will look with that change applied. There are more advanced options on the toolbar as well. For instance, you can change the shape of the blocks if you like. It’s all available on the “SmartArt Tools” bar.

I hope you find this tutorial helpful. Now you know an easy way to create a beautiful organizational chart, and you don’t have to spend a fortune to do it. Using Word’s “SmartArt” feature, you’ll look like a pro around the office!

If you find this tutorial helpful, please recommend us to a friend. As always, we love to get feedback from you.

I would love to have a nickel for every time the word “cloud” is used in some marketing piece these days. Are your marketing numbers down? No fear, just stick the words “cloud-hosted” in front of your product, and watch your numbers soar! For a lot of people, “the cloud” is just some mystery term that makes no sense. Let me put it to you in the simplest terms. If you take data from your computer and store it on another computer outside of your location, via the internet, you’re using “the cloud”. Why is it a “cloud”? Mostly, because you really have no idea of the physical location of the computer storing your information, or of the physical path it takes to get there. Today, I want to describe how you can save Word 2010 documents directly to “the cloud” using Windows Live SkyDrive.

Windows Live SkyDrive is a service of Microsoft. It provides 25GB of free online storage. Two of the greatest features it has are document sharing between yourself and  other Windows Live users, and in-browser editing of the documents that you store there. Let’s open a Word document and see how this is done.

In the picture below, you will see a Word document with a grocery list on it. Let’s say that you and your spouse would both like to be able to access and edit this document remotely. An easy way to do this is to use a shared folder in SkyDrive. To begin the process, you click the “File” tab on the ribbon toolbar in Word.

Under the “File” tab, there is the option called “Save & Send”. Look at the picture below to see what this looks like. If you click this option, you will see a sub-menu with an option labeled “Save to Web”. Finally, clicking that option will take you to a sign in box.

You will need a Windows Live account to use this feature. If you are a Hotmail user, then you already have one. Just use your Hotmail account ID.

Once you are logged in, you will see a list of folders available on your SkyDrive. In the picture below, you will see a folder highlighted under the heading of “Shared Folders”. Selecting this folder will make this file accessible to all the people with whom you have shared this folder.

Now that you have selected the appropriate folder, click the “Save As” button at the bottom of the dialog box. You will see a window pop up similar to the one pictured below. Give the document a name and click the “Save” button to finish the job.

The Word document is now saved in “the cloud”. You can access the document by logging on to http://skydrive.live.com from any computer. When you do, you will see your SkyDrive folders listed.

Open the folder that contains your Word document, and you can view, as well as edit, the document right there in your browser. Below, you can see a picture of what the Word document looks like in the browser, as well as the location of the edit button.

Using Word with SkyDrive is a great way to collaborate with others on a document.  It is also a good safety net because it keeps files backed up in an offsite location.  Hopefully, you can think of other creative uses for this feature.  Feel free to comment on this post at the bottom of the page, and let me know your thoughts on the subject.