How to arrange the content page of a book automatically using Word

Question: I am writing an assignment for my professor. The paper is quite long and I have had a difficult time arranging the content of my paper because I have to go the content page and change the page number very often. I knew from a friend that there is a way to arrange the content automatically using MS Word but I do not know how to do it. Any help ?

Ans: You want to create a Table of Contents.

MS has an online tutorial here:
http://office.microsoft.com/training/training.aspx?AssetID=RC011356771033

Basically you use Word's Styles and Formatting options to mark certain sections of the text in your document with a particular Style, using either the pre-set Styles such as Headings: Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, etc., or by creating your own various Styles and assigning certain text that new Style. Then Insert the Table of Contents where you want it in your document by placing your cursor on a page where the TOC is to be, and select Insert > Reference > Index and Tables... and selecting the Table of Contents tab.
In the Table of Contents window, there is an Options button, which allows to assign a Style to a Level of the Table of Contents, with Level 1 being the highest level, continuing down as many levels as you want. You would use levels like this if you had one Style that you wanted to use for a Chapter name at Level 1, then you could use another Style for maybe a Section name under the Chapter, at Level 2, etc. You can have as many levels in the TOC as you want to, as long as you assign different Styles to each Level, and as long as the text that specifies these various Levels has
been marked with the proper Style in the document.

In effect, it looks like this:

(Style A assigned to Level 1) Chapter
Name................................ 1
(Style B assigned to Level 2) Section
1............................... 7
(Style C assigned to Level 3)
Sub-section................. 8
(etc.)

You can choose and change how the various levels appear, how much indentation there is, what kind of leaders are used between the Level name and the page numbers, etc.

And best of all, as you change the document and add or delete text, all you have to do is go back to the Table of Contents and right-click on it, then choose "Update Field" and select whether you want to "Update page numbers only" or "Update entire table." If you have added more chapters or sections, you would want to update the whole table so the new chapters/sections were added to the TOC. If you only wanted to correct the page numbers, you'd select that option... very handy!