Table of Contents Macro
The Table of Contents macro scans the headings on the current Confluence page to create a table of contents based on those headings. This helps readers find their way around lengthy pages, by summarising the content structure and providing links to headings.
Want to see the Table of Contents macro in action? Check out how it's used in Creating insightful customer interview pages.
Using the Table of Contents macro
Hint: For quick access from the editor toolbar, choose Insert > Table of Contents.
To add the Table of Contents macro to a page:
- In the Confluence editor, choose Insert > Other Macros
- Find and select the required macro
Speeding up macro entry with autocomplete: Type { and the beginning of the macro name, to see a list of suggested macros. Details are in Autocomplete for links, files, macros and mentions.
To edit an existing macro: Click the macro placeholder and choose Edit. A macro dialog window will open, where you can edit the parameters of the macro.
Macro parameters
Parameters are options that you can set to control the content or format of the macro output. Where the parameter name used in Confluence storage format or wikimarkup is different to the label used in the macro browser, it will be listed below in brackets (example).
Parameter | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
Output Type | list |
|
Display Section Numbering | clear | Select the check box to apply outline numbering to your headings, for example: 1.1, 1.2, 1.3. |
List Style | disc | Select the style of bullet point for each list item. You can use any valid CSS style. For example:
|
Heading Indent |
| Sets the indent for a list according to CSS quantities. Entering |
Separator | brackets | This parameter applies to flat lists only. You can enter any of the following values:
|
Minimum Heading Level | 1 | Select the highest heading level to start your TOC list. For example, entering 2 will include levels 2, and lower, headings, but will not include level 1 headings. |
Maximum Heading Level | 7 | Select the lowest heading level to include. For example, entering 2 will include levels 1 and 2, but will not include level 3 headings and below. |
Include Headings |
| Filter headings to include according to specific criteria. You can use wildcard characters. See Sun's Regex documentation for examples of constructing regular expression strings.
|
Exclude Headings |
| Filter headings to enclude according to specific criteria. You can use wildcard characters. See Sun's Regex documentation for examples of constructing regular expression strings.
|
Printable | checked | By default, the TOC is set to print. If you clear the check box, the TOC will not be visible when you print the page. |
CSS Class Name |
| If you have custom TOC styles in your CSS style sheet, use this parameter to output the TOC inside |
Absolute URL (absoluteURL ) | By default, the links in the TOC are relative URLs pointing to the current page. If checked, the links in the TOC will be full URLs. This setting is useful when you are including a page with a Table of Contents in another page, and want to control where the links should take the user. |
Examples
The examples below are based on this table of contents:
Filtered Table of Contents
This example filters the headings to include those that contain 'Favourite', but excludes headings which end with 'Things'. The list is styled with Roman numerals.
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| List Style | upper-roman |
| Include Headings | Favourite.* |
| Exclude Headings | .*Things |
The resulting table of contents is:
Flat List
This example filters all headings to render a flat list of 'Unknowns' enclosed in square brackets (the default list style).
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Output Type | flat |
| Maximum Heading Level | 2 |
| Include Headings | Unknown.* |
The resulting table of contents is:
Notes
- When you use a Table of Contents macro in a template, you will see an error when you preview the template itself. But the Table of Contents macro works on the pages that people create from the template – the table of contents shows up after they have saved the page. (This is probably because the template is not defined as a page, and the Table of Contents macro works for pages only.)
- Due to an outstanding issue in the Table of Contents macro (CONF-10619), the macro browser's Refresh function does not render any parameter modifications. Currently, the rendering of parameter value modifications to the Table of Contents macro occurs only after the page is saved.
Using HTML heading markup with the Table of Contents macro
The Table of Contents macro cannot handle HTML heading markup on its own. Hence, if you use the HTML and HTML Include macros to render HTML heading markup in a Confluence page, the Table of Contents macro will not create a contents list out of these headings. (For more information about this issue, please refer to TOC-93.)
However, if you insert an HTML anchor into each HTML heading on your page (based on the following syntax), the Table of Contents macro will incorporate these headings into your contents list.<h2><a name="pagename-headingname"></a>Heading Name</h2>The syntax for the anchor name is the page name and heading name separated by a hyphen. Remove all spaces and convert all text to lower case. Convert all punctuation marks to their URL-encoded equivalent.
Code examples
The following examples are provided for advanced users who want to inspect or edit the underlying markup for a Confluence page.
Macro name: toc
Macro body: None.
Storage format example
This example shows a list-type table of contents.
<ac:structured-macro ac:name="toc">
<ac:parameter ac:name="printable">true</ac:parameter>
<ac:parameter ac:name="style">square</ac:parameter>
<ac:parameter ac:name="maxLevel">2</ac:parameter>
<ac:parameter ac:name="indent">5px</ac:parameter>
<ac:parameter ac:name="minLevel">2</ac:parameter>
<ac:parameter ac:name="class">bigpink</ac:parameter>
<ac:parameter ac:name="exclude">[1//2]</ac:parameter>
<ac:parameter ac:name="type">list</ac:parameter>
<ac:parameter ac:name="outline">true</ac:parameter>
<ac:parameter ac:name="include">.*</ac:parameter>
</ac:structured-macro>This example shows a flat table of contents.
<ac:structured-macro ac:name="toc">
<ac:parameter ac:name="maxLevel">2</ac:parameter>
<ac:parameter ac:name="minLevel">2</ac:parameter>
<ac:parameter ac:name="class">bigpink</ac:parameter>
<ac:parameter ac:name="exclude">[1//2]</ac:parameter>
<ac:parameter ac:name="type">flat</ac:parameter>
<ac:parameter ac:name="outline">true</ac:parameter>
<ac:parameter ac:name="separator">pipe</ac:parameter>
<ac:parameter ac:name="include">.*</ac:parameter>
</ac:structured-macro>Wiki markup example
This example shows a list-type table of contents.
{toc:printable=true|style=square|maxLevel=2|indent=5px|minLevel=2|class=bigpink|exclude=[1//2]|type=list|outline=true|include=.*}This example shows a flat table of contents.
{toc:printable=true|maxLevel=2|minLevel=2|class=bigpink|exclude=[1//2]|type=flat|outline=true|separator=pipe|include=.*}