Deleting a Table of Contents

by Allen Wyatt
(last updated December 26, 2013)

3

Google Docs includes a great feature that allows you to easily add a table of contents to a document. At some point, though, you may want to get rid of the TOC completely. You would think it would be as easy as deleting all the headings that appear in the TOC, but not so!

If you put the insertion point somewhere within the TOC, you'll notice that Docs shows a box around the entire TOC. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. A TOC has a box that appears around it.

If you delete all the headings in the TOC, then the box still remains—it is an element that must be deleted in its own right. Here are the steps I follow to get rid of a TOC; they should work for you, as well.

  1. Position the insertion point before the existing TOC. When you do so, the TOC box should not appear anywhere on the screen.
  2. Hold down the Shift key as you use the down-arrow to select everything within the TOC.
  3. Make sure you still hold down the Shift key as you select at least one character beyond the end of the TOC. (You should now have the full TOC box and a character before and a character after the box selected.)
  4. Press the Delete key. The TOC is now completely gone.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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What is four more than 2?

2016-10-11 15:11:55

kaya

You can also right click on the table of contents. At the bottom of the potions list, there will be a prompt saying, "Delete Table of Contents".

2016-04-10 17:01:54

Aimee

What a simple solution, but VERY helpful!

2014-03-10 01:07:59

J

Thanks so much!

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