Because of your lack of knowledge of the computer world, you have never been particularly fond of Word, LibreOffice, Pages and all the other word processing programs. This time, however, you were forced to use one of them to accomplish a school research paper.
Contrary to all predictions, you have done a great job: the only problem is that, not knowing about the automatic function included in Word, you have written the table of contents of your document “by hand” resulting in a list that is really ugly to look at, with the page numbers completely misaligned. Unfortunately this is a classic but, don’t worry, it’s a very minor problem.
In fact, what do you say we get this straightened out right now and see, together, how to align the index numbers? I promise you won’t have to rewrite anything and you won’t have to do any work. All you’ll need is software like Word, Writer or Pages and a few minutes of free time. For the rest, all you have to do is follow the instructions below and put them into practice: I assure you that you will be pleasantly surprised by the results you will get. All that remains is for me to wish you a good read and good work!
Align index numbers in Word
If you want to find out how to align table of contents numbers in Word, all you have to do is select all table of contents entries with the mouse, right-click anywhere in the text and choose Paragraph from the menu that appears. The directions apply to all editions of Word, more or less recent, both for Windows and macOS.
In the window that opens, click on the Tabs button located at the bottom left and set up tabs so that the numbers in your index are all aligned the same way. To achieve this, type the number 17 in the Tab Position field, check the boxes Right and None and click the Set button.
Then repeat the same operation by typing the number 16 in the Tab Position field, check the boxes Left and 2 ….. and click first on the Set button and then on OK to save the changes.
As you can easily guess, if you prefer other filler characters to dots, such as longer dots or dashes, you can select one of the other options in Word’s tabulation settings.
Once the tabs are set, you are ready to align the index numbers in your document in slightly different ways depending on how you initially set up your index.
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If, on the other hand, you have already placed dots to separate page numbers from chapter names in your table of contents (e.g., Chapter 1 ………. 1; Chapter 2 ………. 2, etc.), place the Word cursor at the end of the dots for each list item and press the Tab key on your keyboard for perfect alignment.
I know: the whole process is a bit cumbersome, it would definitely be better to use Word’s automatic index feature (which I told you about in detail in my guide on how to insert an index in Word), but if you don’t want to waste too much time or make your previously hard work vain, there is no better solution.
Note: Microsoft Word is also available as an online service (Word Online, which can be used for free with any Microsoft account) and as an app for Android, iOS and Windows 10 Mobile (free for all devices 10.1″ or smaller), however in neither of these two incarnations does it allow you to precisely adjust tabs as in Word for Windows and macOS.
Align index numbers in LibreOffice
Aligning index numbers in LibreOffice is as simple as it is in Word. The procedure to follow, in fact, is almost identical to that provided by the famous Microsoft word processing software (regardless of the operating system used). I would like to point out that the steps are the same on Windows, macOS and Linux (since the program is compatible with all these operating systems).
The first step you have to take is to open the document containing the index to be corrected in LibreOffice, or rather, in Writer, the word processing program included in the suite. To do this, start LibreOffice using its icon on the Windows desktop or in the Launchpad of macOS and select Open from the File menu at the top.
After that, select the index text, right-click on it and choose Paragraph from the menu that appears. In the window that opens, click the Tab tab and click the Delete All button to delete all tabulation settings. Then type the value 17 into the Position text field (top left corner), check the boxes Right and None and click the New button to save the changes.
Now, type the value 16 in the Position text field (top left), check the boxes Left and ……. (the second option of the Fill-in Characters field) and click first on the New button and then on OK to save the changes.
In LibreOffice, as in Word, you can use dashes or other filler characters instead of dots by selecting the appropriate items in the tabbing menu.
In conclusion, if in your table of contents the chapter names and page numbers are separated only by spaces (e.g. Chapter 1 page 1; Chapter 2 page 2, etc.), place the text cursor at the end of each chapter name and press the Space and Tab keys in sequence. If, on the other hand, chapter names and page numbers are already separated by dots (e.g. Chapter 1 ………. 1; Chapter 2 ………. 2; etc.), place the text cursor at the end of the dots and press Tab. You will get a perfectly aligned table of contents.
If you prefer a more “professional” table of contents to a “hand-created” one, you can use Writer’s index function. Format the text of the document appropriately (using titles in the Title 1, Title 2 and Title 3 format), then go to the start page of the file (or the page where you want to insert the table of contents) and select General Index, Index or Bibliography… from the Insert > General Index and Index menu at the top.
In the window that opens, set all the preferences for the index style you want to generate and click the OK button to have the index appear in your document. The table of contents will be built automatically using the titles you have set up in the file (respecting the hierarchy of Title 1, Title 2 and so on).
Align index numbers in Pages
Pages, the word processing software included “as standard” in all Macs and available for free download through the Mac App Store, also makes it very easy to align index numbers.
To proceed, all you need to do is to open the document to which you want to make changes. Then you have to select the table of contents text and choose the Layout tab from the program’s sidebar.
Then expand the Tabs section, click on the [+] button at the bottom left and change the Tab, Alignment and Help values to 17 cm, right and ….. respectively. (or another type of filler, if you prefer). To change these values, you must right-click on them.
Once you’ve set your tabbing preferences, move your cursor to the end of a chapter name or the end of the dots (depending on whether you wrote your table of contents by putting spaces or dots between chapter names and page numbers) and press the Tab key on your Mac keyboard.
This will give you a perfectly aligned index. If you prefer more professional indexes to “manual” indexes, you can use the index function included in Pages, formatting your document appropriately (i.e., using the Header, Heading 2, etc. styles for chapter headings) and then going to the Insert > Index > Document Index menu at the top.
Note: Pages is also available as a free iOS app (so for iPhone and iPad) and as a free online service on the iCloud site. However, I hate to break it to you, but tab-related settings are not available in either of these incarnations of the software. If you want to take painstaking action on indexes, you need to use Pages for macOS.