When writing a large essay or paper, having page numbers and a table of contents is immensely useful, and sometimes even required for academic writing. Not to worry, it's dummy easy!

Makes sure your documents uses headers

In order to use the automatic table of contents you must use the built-in headers in Word. They are also very convenient for formatting, and you can change the global style in your document to suit your needs.

Insert the Table of Contents

You can put this wherever you want, however, a good spot would be after the title or on a separate page after the front page. Once you've decided, go to References > Table of Contents > Automatic Table [1/2].

Make sure it's up to date

If you add more sections after adding the table, you need to manually update it. Press anywhere in the table, then press Update table, then select Update entire table, and then OK.

Update table

Update entire table

Please excuse my screenshot annotations. Windows 10 doesn't allow you to draw good-looking arrows or circles :(