Tutorial: Formatting a Report

Section/Page Breaks; Page Numbering and Automatic Table of Contents (TOC)

To make life easier throughout your years at university, it is extremely useful to create a
template which you can use for all of your assessments. This tutorial will teach you how and
when to use section and/or page breaks in a document so that the pages are numbered
correctly, in the correct style, and how to use headings / styles so that a table of contents can
be generated automatically.

A series of short videos have been created showing the steps as listed below. Supplement this
document with the videos.

1. Overview of Report Structure

1.1. A report generally has some preliminary pages, followed by the body of the report.
The pages of different parts of the report must be numbered using different styles.
1.2. Preliminary pages are any which come before the introduction, including the cover
page stating that your work is original and/or a title page, executive summary, the
table of contents, and, where applicable, acknowledgements. Although you need to
include a cover page, it is not part of your report. Preliminary pages are numbered in
lower-case Roman numerals (i, ii, iii, iv, ...). The title page is the first page, but it does
not have a number, so the first numbered page will be the second page of your report
with the number ii.
1.3. All the remaining pages of your report, after the TOC will be numbered with Arabic
numerals (1, 2, 3, 4, ...). Thus the report proper begins on page 1, usually with your
introduction.
1.4. Provide a title in your table of contents to describe the contents of each appendix
(Note: one appendix, two or more appendices). Don't just call them Appendix 1 or
Appendix 2.

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2. Formatting your Document

The Faculty of Agribusiness and Commerce Style Guide defines the requirements for margins,
line spacing, justification, and font style and size. Follow this Guide, unless told otherwise by
the examiner of the course.

2.1. Open a blank document in Word.

2.2. To set the margins, in the Page Layout ribbon, click on the dropdown arrow under
Margins in the Page Setup box (far left). Go to Custom margins at the bottom of the
dialogue box, and change all margins to 2.5cm.
2.3. To set the line spacing, in the Home ribbon, click on the arrow in the lower right
corner of the Paragraph box. Select 1.5 lines from the Line spacing dropdown arrow.
Select Set as Default.
2.4. Justification is selected from the Paragraph box in the Home ribbon. Do not fully
justify, unless this is a requirement from the examiner, as fully justified documents are
harder to read.
2.5. Font and size are set in the Font box in the Home ribbon. Select Calibri for the style
and 12 for the size. Type some random text, highlight it, then, In the Styles box (to the
right) right click the mouse when it is hovering over Normal, and select “Update
Normal to Match Selection”.
2.6. Save this document, by clicking on “Save as” in the File ribbon, browsing to the
appropriate folder, then naming the document e.g. “Report template”.

3. Laying out your Pages

To help navigate your document, make sure the Section is showing in the status bar at the
bottom of the window. If not, turn it on by right-clicking your mouse while hovering over the
status bar, then turn Section on from the Customise Status Bar dialogue box that opens. Also,

turn the hide/show button from the home ribbon on. This means that you can see
paragraph marks and other formatting symbols that are not normally seen. When you print a
document these formatting symbols do not print.

3.1. We shall assume that the first page of your report/essay is the cover page. Type Cover
Page at the top of the page. (Later on you will copy and paste the cover page here.)

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 Next, insert a section break. To do this, go to the Page Layout ribbon and click on the

drop down arrow in the breaks button . Make sure you go half-way down
to the Section Break area and select ‘Next Page’. This has now added another page to
your document.
3.2. Type Title Page at the top of the second page which was added in the previous step.
We now want to add another page for the Executive Summary, but we want this to be
in the same section, so we will add a page break. There are at least two ways of doing
this. You can either click Ctrl and Enter at the same time, or you can go to the Breaks
drop down menu as you did in step 2, but select Page from the Page Break area. Type
Executive Summary, then add another page.
3.3. Type Table of Contents. As the body of the report starts after this, you need to add
another Section Next Page break. The status bar at the bottom of your document
should now show that you are in Section 3, Page 5.

4. Requirements for a Table of Contents Page – instructions follow in section

5.

The contents page sets out the sections and subsections of the report and their corresponding
page numbers. It should clearly show the structural relationship between the sections and
subsections. A reader looking for specific information should be able to locate the appropriate
section easily from the table of contents. The conventions for section and page numbering are
as follows:

Number the sections by the decimal point numbering system:

1 Title of first main section (usually Introduction)

1.1 First subheading

1.2 Second subheading

2 Title of second main section

2.1 First subheading

2.2 Second subheading

2.2.1 First division in the second subheading

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 2.2.2 Second division in the second subheading

3 Title of third main section

5. Setting Heading Styles

To automatically create a table of contents, styles need to be used. You will create your own
heading styles in the format required by your examiner or the Commerce Division. On the
home ribbon, there is a box of styles, which includes Heading 1, Normal, etc. If no more than
one heading style is showing, click on the arrow in the bottom right corner of the Styles box

. In the dialogue box that opens, select Options at the bottom, then tick the “Show next
heading when previous level is used” and select “New documents based on this template”
(Figure 1) and click OK.

Figure 1: Style pane options

5.1. Do not use any styles before the body of the report, i.e. the Executive Summary as we
do not want these in the Table of Contents.

5.2. Now start a multi-level numbered list using the decimal point numbering system
from the Paragraph section on the Home tab. Type the heading you want e.g.
Introduction or Level 1 heading, and format it as required. Hit Enter. The next line
should have the number 2. If the number is not showing, click on the Multi-level
numbered list again. To change this to the next heading style, click on the Multi-level
numbered list again, go to the “Change list level” option and select 1.1 – the number

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 should change to 1.1. Type your heading e.g. Level 2, and format as required. Set up
your third level (1.1.1) in the same way.
5.3. Next, highlight the first heading and, with the mouse hovering over Heading 1 in the
Styles section of the ribbon, right click and select ‘Update Heading 1 to Match
Selection’. Update Headings 2 and 3 in the same way for the second and third heading
levels.
5.4. If Heading levels keep appearing when you hit Enter, use the Backspace key until the
numbers have disappeared and the cursor is back to the left margin.
5.5. N.B. These subheadings will not be used in this position in the report, and they will be
deleted later, but they need to be inserted here to set up the styles for the automatic
creation of the Table of Contents.
5.6. For the body of your report use the Normal style. You may need to modify this to
meet the requirements of the lecturer or the Faculty of Agribusiness and Commerce
Style Guide. Write a paragraph with the correct font, font size, line-spacing and
paragraph settings, then right-click while the cursor is hovering over Normal and click
‘Update Normal to Match Selection’, or create your own Body Style.
5.7. To add other headings such as Discussion, Conclusions, Recommendations, etc. to your
document, click on Heading 1, then type Discussion, etc. which should be
automatically be formatted as above. Enter a Page Break before adding the References
heading, and another Page Break before the Appendix.
5.8. You now have the basic structure required for a report or an essay.

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6. Inserting Different Styles of Page Numbering

6.1. Return to the first page of the document. From the Insert ribbon, click on Page

Number , Bottom of Page, Plain Number 2 (if you want the number in the
middle of the page) or Plain Number 3 (if you want the number to the right of the
page) – this depends on whether you are following the instructions from the FOC style
guide or your examiner. A footer has now been added to your document and all pages
are numbered.
6.2. When the cursor is in the footer a Header & Footer Tools ribbon is now visible. While
in the footer on Page 1, tick “Different First Page”. The page number disappears from
Page 1 (the cover page).
6.3. Go to Page 2 and double click in the Footer at the bottom of the page. Tick “Different
First Page” and turn “Link to Previous” off. The page number should have disappeared
from page 2 as well but all other pages from here on should be showing the page
number.
6.4. While still in the footer in Page 2, click on the drop down arrow beside Page Number
(to the left of the Header & Footer Tools ribbon) and select “Format Page Numbers”.
Change the Number format to Roman numerals, and select “Start at” in the Page
numbering area (Figure 2). Page three of your document (the Executive Summary
page or the Table of Contents page is now numbered ii).

Figure 2: Page Number Format box

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 6.5. When you double click in the footer in the next page, which is in a new section, the

Link to Previous button is highlighted in the Footers & Headers

Design Tools tab. To change the format of the page number in the next section, or to
start the new section with a different number, click on this button to break the link to
the previous section.
6.6. Change the format the page numbers by selecting Format Page Numbers as in the
earlier step. Make sure the Number format is Arabic, then click in “Start at’ and it
should show 1. If not, change to 1.
6.7. The cover and title pages should not have page numbers, the Executive Summary or
Table of Contents page should have ii, and the pages starting from the Introduction
should be numbered consecutively from 1.
6.8. When you have the “Hide/Show” on, you will see a paragraph mark in the Footer. You
can now add a Report Title, Name, ID number, etc. to the footer at that position. You
probably do not need this until the body of the report (check with your lecturer), so
add it in the Introduction page and it will be in all subsequent pages.
6.9. To exit the Footer, either close the Header & Footer Tools ribbon, or double click in the
body of the page.

7. Automatically Creating a Table of Contents

7.1. Now that the page numbers have been inserted and the Headings have been
formatted using Styles, we can insert the Table of Contents.
7.2. Go to the Table of Contents page.
7.3. From the References ribbon, click on the Table of Contents drop-down menu (on the
far left side of the ribbon).
7.4. Select Automatic Table 2.
7.5. Delete “Table of Contents” that you typed in earlier.
7.6. If you add extra headings, or more material, the table can be updated by clicking
anywhere in the Table of Contents, then clicking the Update table.

Save your formatted document as your report template, that can be used for all assignments
(with minor alterations as necessary).

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8. Automatically Creating a Table of Tables and / or Table of Figures

These can be created in a similar fashion, but Figure numbers and Table numbers must be
entered from the References tab, Insert Caption. These figures or tables can be referred to in
the text by using the Cross-reference icon from the same place as the Insert Caption. The
beauty of adding captions and cross-referencing this way is that if you insert another figure or
table into your document before an existing figure or table, the numbers of subsequent figures
or tables can be updated by the programme.

Although the Table of Tables and / or Table of Figures will come after the Table of Contents,
these Tables should be inserted before the Table of Contents. Have a play and see how you
go! If you can master this now, life at university will be much easier!