How to build a Table of Authorities in Word

A Table of Authorities lists every case, statute, rule and other authority a brief cites, with the pages where each one appears. Microsoft Word can build it for you, but only from citations you have marked first. Here is the whole process, start to finish, and the mistakes that most often leave a table wrong on filing day.

How Word builds a Table of Authorities

Word’s table is made of two kinds of fields, small pieces of hidden code in the document:

• TA fields (Table of Authorities entries). Each time you mark a citation, Word inserts a TA field next to it, such as { TA \l "Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544 (2007)" \s "Twombly" \c 1 }. It holds the long citation as it will appear in the table, a short citation that ties later references to it, and a category number.
• A TOA field (the table itself). It collects the TA fields of one category and lists each authority with its page numbers.

So the work happens in three passes: mark every citation, insert the table, then update the table whenever the document changes.

Table of Contents vs. Table of Authorities

They look alike but are built differently. Word’s Table of Contents comes from your headings: it lists paragraphs that use the built-in Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3 … styles (or have an outline level). If your argument headings are bold, centered Normal text, the Table of Contents has nothing to pick up. Apply heading styles to them first, then insert the contents from References → Table of Contents. The Table of Authorities ignores styles entirely and comes only from TA fields.

Before you start

• Mark citations when the text is close to final. You can mark earlier, but every rewrite risks orphaned or duplicate entries.
• Make the citations consistent first. Word groups entries by the exact text of the long and short citations, so “Twombly” and “Twombley” become two authorities. The free Citation Format Checker finds the citations in pasted text, flags common format problems and previews a Table of Authorities, which helps you spot variants before you start marking.
• Check your court’s rules for whether a table is required, what it must include and how authorities should be grouped. Our court pages list what we hold for each federal court.

Step 1: Mark each citation

1. Select the first full citation of an authority, for example Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544 (2007).
2. On the References tab, in the Table of Authorities group, click Mark Citation, or press Alt+Shift+I.
3. In the Mark Citation dialog, edit the Selected text box so the long citation reads exactly as it should appear in the table. You can remove pin cites and signals here without changing the brief itself.
4. Choose a Category, such as Cases.
5. Edit the Short citation box to the short form you use later in the brief, for example Twombly.
6. Click Mark to mark this occurrence, or Mark All to mark every occurrence of the long and short citation text that matches exactly.
7. Click Next Citation to jump to the next text that looks like a citation (Word looks for patterns such as “v.”), and repeat. The dialog stays open while you work in the document.

Long citation and short citation

The long citation is the entry printed in the table. The short citation is how Word recognises later references to the same authority, so Mark All can find them and the table lists every page. Once an authority is marked, its short citation appears in the Short citation list in the dialog: to mark a later reference that Mark All missed, select it in the document, choose the authority from that list and click Mark.

Categories

Word has seven built-in categories, numbered in this order:

1. Cases
2. Statutes
3. Other Authorities
4. Rules
5. Treatises
6. Regulations
7. Constitutional Provisions

Categories 8 to 16 are unnamed. Click Category… in the Mark Citation dialog to rename any category, for example to “Secondary Sources” or “Legislative Materials”, if your court or firm groups authorities differently.

Step 2: Check and edit the TA fields

TA fields are formatted as hidden text. To see them, click Show/Hide ¶ on the Home tab (Ctrl+Shift+8). Each one appears in braces right after the citation it marks.

• To fix an entry, edit the text inside the quotation marks of the TA field. Fix it in every TA field for that authority, or the table will show two entries.
• To remove an entry, select the whole field, braces included, and delete it.
• When you are done, click Show/Hide ¶ again. Displayed hidden text takes up space on the page, so leaving it visible can throw off the page numbers in the table.

Step 3: Insert the table

1. Put the cursor where the table belongs, usually after the Table of Contents.
2. On the References tab, click Insert Table of Authorities.
3. Under Category, choose All or a single category. To control the order of the sections, you can insert one category at a time.
4. Choose the options:
   • Use passim: an authority cited on five or more pages shows “passim” instead of the page numbers. Check whether your court or judge accepts it.
   • Keep original formatting: keeps the italics or underlining of the citation in the table.
   • Tab leader: the dots (or other leader) between the citation and the page numbers.
   • Formats and Modify…: the look of the table, through the Table of Authorities and TOA Heading styles.
5. Click OK.

If you see something like { TOA \h \c "1" \p } instead of a table, Word is showing field codes. Press Alt+F9 to switch back to results.

Step 4: Update the table after every change

The table does not update itself. After any edit, click in the table and press F9, or click Update Table in the Table of Authorities group on the References tab. To update the Table of Contents and the Table of Authorities together, press Ctrl+A and then F9. Do a final update right before you save the PDF you file.

Never type corrections into the table itself: the next update replaces them. Fix the TA field instead.

Common mistakes

• Marking only the first appearance. If you click Mark rather than Mark All, later pages are left out. Use Mark All, then check with Show/Hide ¶ that every reference has a TA field.
• Short forms that don’t match. Mark All only finds text that matches the short citation exactly. A different short name, a typo or a line break inside the citation is missed. Search the brief for each party name and mark stragglers by hand.
• Id. citations. Mark All can’t tell which authority an Id. refers to. Select each Id. that should count, choose the authority from the Short citation list and click Mark, or follow your court’s convention if it says otherwise.
• Field codes or hidden text showing. Field codes (Alt+F9) and displayed hidden text (Show/Hide ¶) both change what is on each page. Turn them off before the final update.
• Updating too early. Page numbers move when you change fonts, margins, line spacing, footnotes or the cover page. Update the table last, after all formatting changes.
• Editing the table by hand. Manual changes disappear on the next update.
• An empty Table of Contents. The contents only lists paragraphs with heading styles or outline levels. Apply Heading 1 to Heading 3 to your section and argument headings.

How DraftAria helps

DraftAria doesn’t replace Word’s table; it prepares documents so Word can build it with less marking by hand.

• Word’s own styles. Word (.docx) downloads use Word’s built-in styles: Title, Heading 1 to 6 with outline levels, Body Text, List Paragraph and others. Word’s Table of Contents, the Navigation pane and other Word tools can see the document’s structure, and your firm can restyle it from the Styles pane.
• Real table fields. A line that reads [TABLE OF CONTENTS] or [TABLE OF AUTHORITIES] becomes a real Word Table of Contents or Table of Authorities field, one TOA field per category with category headings and passim switched on. Word may ask to update the document’s fields when you open it; otherwise right-click the table and choose Update Field.
• Citations marked for you, conservatively. For court documents, such as templates from the generator, the Word download adds TA fields for full case citations, statutes, rules, regulations and constitutional provisions that DraftAria’s rule-based parser fully understood with no format errors, and for short forms such as “Twombly, 550 U.S. at 556” or supra that it can tie to one of them. It does not mark Id., citations with format problems or authorities it doesn’t recognise, such as treatises. Check the table and mark anything missing using the steps above.
• A free preview. The Citation Format Checker lists the citations in pasted text or an uploaded Word or PDF file, flags common Bluebook format problems and previews a Table of Authorities, with no sign-up.

Other add-ins and services also build or check tables of authorities. Whatever tool you use, read the finished table against the brief before you file.

Sources

• Microsoft Support: Create a table of authorities

Menu names and shortcuts can vary between versions of Word. More about DraftAria on the product overview and integrations pages.