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3. Add Table of Contents

How to Add Table of Contents

Chaknith Bin

Updated:July 28, 2025

A table of contents (TOC) is like a roadmap that helps readers navigate through the PDF document's contents. It typically appears at the beginning and lists the main sections or chapters of the PDF, along with the page numbers where each section begins. This allows readers to quickly find and jump to specific parts of the document, making it easier to access the information they need.

IronPDF provides a feature to create a table of contents with hyperlinks to the 'h1', 'h2', 'h3', 'h4', 'h5', and 'h6' elements. The default styling of this table of contents will not conflict with other styles in the HTML content.

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Add Table of Contents Example

Use the TableOfContents property to enable the creation of a table of contents in the output PDF document. This property can be assigned to one of three TableOfContentsTypes, which are described as follows:

• None: Do not create a table of contents
• Basic: Create a table of contents without page numbers
• WithPageNumbers: Create a table of contents WITH page numbers

To understand this feature better, you can download the sample HTML file below:

• Download the sample HTML file

Code

:path=/static-assets/pdf/content-code-examples/how-to/table-of-contents.cs

using IronPdf;

// Instantiate Renderer
ChromePdfRenderer renderer = new ChromePdfRenderer();

// Configure render options
renderer.RenderingOptions = new ChromePdfRenderOptions
{
    // Enable table of content feature
    TableOfContents = TableOfContentsTypes.WithPageNumbers,
};

PdfDocument pdf = renderer.RenderHtmlFileAsPdf("tableOfContent.html");

pdf.SaveAs("tableOfContents.pdf");

Imports IronPdf

' Instantiate Renderer
Private renderer As New ChromePdfRenderer()

' Configure render options
renderer.RenderingOptions = New ChromePdfRenderOptions With {.TableOfContents = TableOfContentsTypes.WithPageNumbers}

Dim pdf As PdfDocument = renderer.RenderHtmlFileAsPdf("tableOfContent.html")

pdf.SaveAs("tableOfContents.pdf")

Output PDF

The table of contents will be created with hyperlinks to each of the 'h1', 'h2', 'h3', 'h4', 'h5', and 'h6'.

Table of Contents Placement on the PDF

1. Ensure that the HTML document has proper header tags (h1 up to h6).
2. Optionally insert a div for where you want the Table of Contents to appear. If the below div is not provided, IronPDF will insert the Table of Contents at the start.

<div id="ironpdf-toc"></div>

<div id="ironpdf-toc"></div>

3. In the render options, choose to render the table of contents either with or without page numbers.

Styling the Table of Contents

The Table of Contents can be styled using CSS by targeting the various CSS selectors that define the style of the Table of Contents.

In addition, styling modifications can be done using the CustomCssUrl property. Let's begin by downloading a CSS file that contains the original styling for the table of contents below.

• Download the custom CSS file

:path=/static-assets/pdf/content-code-examples/how-to/table-of-contents-overwrite-styling.cs

using IronPdf;
using System.IO;

// Instantiate Renderer
ChromePdfRenderer renderer = new ChromePdfRenderer();

// Configure render options
renderer.RenderingOptions = new ChromePdfRenderOptions
{
    // Enable table of content feature
    TableOfContents = TableOfContentsTypes.WithPageNumbers,
    CustomCssUrl = "./custom.css"
};

// Read HTML text from file
string html = File.ReadAllText("tableOfContent.html");
PdfDocument pdf = renderer.RenderHtmlAsPdf(html);

pdf.SaveAs("tableOfContents.pdf");

Imports IronPdf
Imports System.IO

' Instantiate Renderer
Private renderer As New ChromePdfRenderer()

' Configure render options
renderer.RenderingOptions = New ChromePdfRenderOptions With {
	.TableOfContents = TableOfContentsTypes.WithPageNumbers,
	.CustomCssUrl = "./custom.css"
}

' Read HTML text from file
Dim html As String = File.ReadAllText("tableOfContent.html")
Dim pdf As PdfDocument = renderer.RenderHtmlAsPdf(html)

pdf.SaveAs("tableOfContents.pdf")

Style Headers

Use the '#ironpdf-toc ul li.h1' selector to apply different styling to the H1 header in the table of contents. Replace 'h1' with 'h2' up to 'h6' to change the styling for each respective header.

 #ironpdf-toc ul li.h1 {
    font-style: italic;
    font-weight: bold;
 }

Font Family

With both the '#ironpdf-toc li .title' and '#ironpdf-toc li .page' selectors, it is possible to overwrite the font family of the table of contents. To do this, we can use the cursive font for the title and utilize the @font-face attribute to use the custom 'Lemon' font designed by Eduardo Tunni.

• Download the Lemon font

 #ironpdf-toc li .title {
    order: 1;
    font-family: cursive;
 }

 @font-face {
    font-family: 'lemon';
    src: url('Lemon-Regular.ttf')
 }

 #ironpdf-toc li .page {
    order: 3;
    font-family: 'lemon', sans-serif;
 }

Indentation

Indentation can be controlled using the ':root' selector. This value determines the amount of indent for each header level (h1, h2, ...) in the table of contents. It can be increased as needed, or there can be no indentation with a value of 0.

:root {
    --indent-length: 25px;
}

Dot Line

To remove the dotted lines between the header title and page number, modify the background-image of the ::after selector. In the original styling, the second parameter is "currentcolor 1px". Change it to "transparent 1px" to remove the dots. It is important to specify other attributes as well because, in this selector, the new styling will completely override the old styling rather than just adding to it.

 #ironpdf-toc li::after {
    background-image: radial-gradient(circle, transparent 1px, transparent 1.5px);
    background-position: bottom;
    background-size: 1ex 4.5px;
    background-repeat: space no-repeat;
    content: "";
    flex-grow: 1;
    height: 1em;
    order: 2;
 }

Ready to see what else you can do? Check out our tutorial page here: Convert PDFs

Chaknith Bin

  Chat with engineering team now

Software Engineer

Chaknith works on IronXL and IronBarcode. He has deep expertise in C# and .NET, helping improve the software and support customers. His insights from user interactions contribute to better products, documentation, and overall experience.

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