Word 2010 - Insert and edit a table of contents

Hello,

I am writing a paper, I have a lot of chapters and I have made a table of contents in Word 2010 by:
tab "references" -> "Add text"
And so for each chapter / subsection title. Everything was great, the levels were right, but when I started modifying the work and adding chapters in the middle it all ... screwed up. For unknown reasons, the options "raise the level" and "Lower the level" are disabled and, above all, if you move to a new line after any chapter, a new field is automatically created in the table of contents into which the entire next chapter is entered, I cannot separate it from the new title .
If anyone knows how to deal with what I wrote above, it's great, please give me some tips.
And the main question is:
How to not only remove the table of contents placed in the document, but also all references related to it? The "delete table of contents" option does not delete them and you can restore the previously deleted table of contents. I don't want this, I want to get rid of everything related to the table of contents in the document (not the text, of course). Deleting individual fields deletes entire chapters ...

I will be grateful for your help.

My friend,

I will write you how I insert / remove / modify the table of contents in Word 2010, and then I will try to answer your doubts.

1. I format the styles at the very beginning of writing the work, I set the "Header 1", "Header 2" etc.
2. I am writing a thesis.
3. After writing or while writing, I insert the table of contents: the "References" tab, on the left side I click the "Table of contents" icon, a menu opens, from which at the very bottom I select the "Insert table of contents" option, a window with options for the table of contents, where I choose / edit options as needed, e.g. levels.
4. The table of contents is generated automatically from the headings (point 1).
Such a list can be modified, e.g. throw away or add a fragment of the text to it, without any consequences for the entire document (whole chapters or subsections will not disappear for sure).
5. To update the list, click on the list and two options appear: "Update only page numbers" and "Update the entire list".
If you follow these steps, you should have no problems creating and freely editing the table of contents.

Note, I am not using the option you wrote about, which is "Add Text".

Added after 8 [minutes]:

If you cannot cope with the "Add text" option and removing references, I suggest that you delete the names of the chapters / subsections throughout the document, leaving only their content, format the headings as needed for each level. Enter the names of the chapters and subchapters again, using the appropriate headings, and finally use the pattern that I described above.

If it doesn't work, you can also try to move the contents of the chapters and subchapters (only text, figures, tables, etc.) to a new blank document, using the appropriate copy / paste option, eg "Keep T text only", without keeping the source formatting.

Thanks for the answer.

I wanted to avoid copying fragments into a new document and setting everything up from scratch + moving and scaling drawings, diagrams, etc.

Removing the formatting for the headers themselves also works, so I noticed only a moment is going to have to be spent on it. Really if you have a header let's say:
"3.4. Calculations
/ some text / ",
so after going to a new line after the header title, you don't see a new empty line with the same level in the table of contents? Then I will create a new .doc and try it.
Thank you again.

PS Deleting individual lines from a table of contents created using "add text" removes the entire chapter unless you remove the formatting from the header line first.

Magik009 wrote:

Really if you have a header let's say:
"3.4. Calculations / some text /", after going to a new line after the heading title, you don't see a new empty line with the same level in the table of contents?

If you use the headings properly, nothing extra will appear in the table of contents. You need to pay attention to whether the text under the chapter name has formatting such as "Normal" or remains in the style of the heading. If you miss something, after updating the table of contents, the content of the chapter (text) may appear in the table of contents itself, and you don't want that