Tuesday, July 3, 2012

How to Create a Clickable Table of Contents


In preparing my newest mystery novel, “Chasing Angels” for publishing on Kindle one of the most difficult things for me to figure out was how to make a clickable table of contents. I was able to find lots of instructions on the internet for setting up a table of contents in Word (I was using Word 2008), but no clear instructions for making the table of contents clickable for the Kindle. It seemed all of the instructions I found made it appear way more difficult than was necessary. Once I finally figured out how to link my chapters and make them clickable on the Kindle, I decided I should share this information in simple terms for others to use. It is really quite simple once you understand it.

Here is how I managed to make my table of contents clickable for Kindle (using Word 2008):

After you establish your Table of Contents in your book. Go to each of your chapter headings in your book. Highlight each heading and click Insert from your menu: it should look like this:
Click on Bookmark and this window will open:





















Type in the name of your bookmark. (It can be anything you like as long as you know that identifies this particular bookmark). I chose to use Chapter1 because I’m going to link it to Chapter 1 in my book. Then click “Add.”





Then go to your Table of Contents and highlight Chapter 1 (or whatever your Chapter name is). Then click insert again, but this time you are going to click on “Hyperlink.”




















When you click on “Hyperlink” this window will open:

















Click on “Document” in the window and then “Locate” to find the name of your bookmark (created earlier) to link your Chapter.  A list of your bookmarks will open. Click the appropriate bookmark for that Chapter heading.




Select Chapter1 then click OK. This links the Chapter 1 in your Table of Contents to the bookmark you created for your Chapter Heading in your book. Do this for each of your Chapter headings and each Chapter listing in your table of contents. You can bookmark all of your Chapters first in your book and then go to your Table of Contents and hyperlink each one to those bookmarks. Or you can create the bookmark and then the hyperlink as you go, whichever works for you. I chose to create all of the bookmarks for my Chapter Headings within the book first and then went back and added the hyperlinks for each Chapter listed in my Table of Contents. When you’re done, your Chapters will be linked to your Chapter headings in your book.

I hope this helps make this process a bit clearer for you. It may be slightly different if you are using a different version of Word, but this will give you an idea of how the process works.


4 comments:

  1. Thank you so much for this information. I now know how to create clickable links for my books on MS Word. All the best.

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  2. Thanks! These instructions are so clear and easy - just finished making my clickable TOC.

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  3. Thanks! I've spent hours searching on Google & watching Youtube videos and you are the only one with an answer which works. Thanks Again! Buck

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