The 48-Page Annual Report and the Printer's Deadline
A block development office must submit its 48-page annual report. The clerk typed it in a word processor and made each chapter title bold and 16 pt by hand rather than using styles. The officer now wants an automatic table of contents, a cover page with no page number, the contents pages numbered i, ii, iii, and the body numbered 1, 2, 3. Two reviewers have already returned copies with tracked changes and comments, and their edits overlap on page 9. The printer's shop has asked for a PDF and says it will not work from the .docx because "the layout shifts". The clerk inserted a table of contents yesterday and it displays "No table of contents entries found". The report also mixes "Rs." and "₹" from page to page.
1. The table of contents shows "No table of contents entries found". Explain why, and describe the steps to produce one that updates automatically when the report is edited.
Read the worked answer
A table of contents is generated from styles, not from appearance. The clerk made titles bold and 16 pt directly, which changes how the text looks but leaves every title in the Normal style. The TOC field therefore looks for Heading 1, Heading 2 and so on, finds none, and reports that there are no entries.
The repair is a two-part job:
- Apply Heading 1 to chapter titles and Heading 2 to sub-sections, using the style gallery. The formatting can be adjusted once by modifying the style, so all chapters change together instead of being reformatted one by one.
- Place the cursor at the contents page and insert References > Table of Contents > Automatic Table.
From then on, when a chapter is added or renamed, the clerk right-clicks the TOC and chooses Update Field > Update entire table. This is the real gain: page numbers and titles stay correct without manual editing, which is exactly where hand-formatted reports fail before a deadline.
A quick check: the Navigation Pane should list all chapters. If it shows only one entry, the headings have not been applied correctly.
2. The report needs three numbering schemes: no number on the cover, roman numerals for the contents, and arabic numerals starting at 1 for the body. Explain how this is done and why page breaks alone will not work.
Read the worked answer
A plain page break keeps the document in the same section, and page numbering is a section-level setting. So if the clerk uses page breaks, any change to numbering affects the whole report at once. Section breaks are required.
Steps: insert a Next Page section break after the cover and another after the contents. Then, for each section, open the header/footer, select the page number field, and choose Format Page Numbers > Start at and the number format.
- Section 1 (cover): insert no page number at all.
- Section 2 (contents): roman numerals, start at i.
- Section 3 (body): arabic numerals, start at 1.
The setting that decides whether this works is Link to Previous, which is on by default. It must be switched off in sections 2 and 3; otherwise the header and footer are shared with the preceding section and the numbering settings are overridden. The check is simple: scroll to the first body page and confirm it shows 1, not 4 - if it shows 4, the link is still active.
3. Two reviewers returned tracked changes that overlap on page 9, and the printer wants a PDF. Explain the review and output steps, and why the printer's request is reasonable.
Read the worked answer
Review. Open Review > Track Changes and use Show Markup to see both reviewers' insertions, deletions and comments. Where the edits overlap on page 9, the document shows them as competing changes; use Accept or Reject one at a time and read the resulting sentence, because accepting both can produce duplicated text. The Reviewing Pane lists every remaining change, so the clerk can confirm that nothing is left pending. If the two reviewers' versions had arrived as separate files, Compare > Combine would merge them with both sets of marks.
Output. Before exporting, run Find & Replace to standardise on ₹ throughout, and update the table of contents. Then use File > Save As > PDF, or Export. Tick the option to create bookmarks from headings, which makes a 48-page report navigable.
The printer's request is reasonable: a PDF embeds fonts and fixes the layout, so the file opens identically on any machine. A .docx depends on the fonts and the word-processor version installed at the print shop - if a font is missing, lines reflow and pages shift, which is exactly the complaint made. Keep the .docx as the editable master and send the PDF for printing.