With PERRLA for Word on Mac, it’s easy to add perfectly formatted Tables of Content to your APA and MLA Research Papers.
About Tables of Content
On a Mac, PERRLA lives side-by-side with Microsoft Word and has a number of tabs to help you write your Research papers. You can manage the sections of your Paper - like the Table of Contents - using the Paper Sections tab in PERRLA.
While Microsoft Word does have a Table of Contents feature, it isn’t formatted correctly for APA or MLA. PERRLA’s formatting is perfect for both. Don't use it if you want correct formatting!
Before we add a Table of Contents to this paper, you need to know that PERRLA builds your Table of Contents based on the PERRLA headings you’ve added to your paper using PERRLA’s Paper’s Body tab. If you don’t use PERRLA to format your paper’s headings, then the Table of Contents won’t know to include the heading when it’s built.
You can add a heading using PERRLA by highlighting the text you want to turn into a heading, then selecting the heading level in PERRLA.
Adding the Table of Contents
Now that we have some headings, let’s add a Table of Contents to this paper.
- Expand the Table of Contents section in Paper Sections in PERRLA
- Click Add a Table of Contents
That's it - really!
By default, the Table of Contents is indented to reflect the heading levels. You can change the Table of Contents indentation style using the radio buttons in the Table of Contents section in PERRLA and clicking Update.
Updating the Table of Contents
It’s important to know that the Table of Contents is not updated automatically as you type. This is a limitation of Microsoft Word.
If you want to update your Table of Contents to reflect any new headings, new indentation selection, or other changes, click the Update Table of Contents button in PERRLA. This will rebuild your Table of Contents with the latest information.
Deleting your Table of Contents
If you want to delete your Table of Contents from your paper, just click the red Delete Table of Contents button in PERRLA and poof! It’s gone.
Don’t worry, you can add it back the same way you created it the first time.