Table of Authorities Page Numbers Wrong or Not Updating — How to Fix

Causes of wrong table of authorities page numbers

Why hidden text shifts pages

Every marked citation is a TA field such as { TA \l "Baldwin v. Alberti, 58 Wn. 2d 243 (1961)" \s "Baldwin v. Alberti" \c 1 }, formatted as hidden text. While Show/Hide ¶ is on — or File › Options › Display › Hidden text is ticked — those fields are displayed inline and take real space. In a heavily cited brief that can add pages, so a citation on printed page 12 may be counted on page 14. Word builds the table from whatever pagination is showing at that moment. Note that Alt+F9 toggles field codes such as the TOA field itself, but does not show or hide TA fields; only Show/Hide ¶ and the Hidden text option do.

Step-by-step fix in Word for Windows

Roman front matter and section restarts

Most briefs number the cover, tables and other front matter in lowercase roman numerals and restart the body at 1. In Word this needs a Layout › Breaks › Next Page section break between the two parts, Link to Previous deselected in the body's footer (or header — they link separately), and a Start at value under Page Number › Format Page Numbers. Microsoft's steps are on its page-numbering support page. If the break is missing, the body keeps counting from the front matter and every page in the table is too high by the length of the front matter. If a stray section break sits in the body with its own Start at, numbering restarts mid-brief and the table can list two different pages as "5".

Word view vs the PDF you file

The court sees the PDF, not your Word screen. The two drift apart when the PDF is created before the last edit, on a different computer, or with a font the machine doesn't have — Word substitutes a font, lines rewrap and page breaks move. Microsoft's Embed fonts in the file option (File › Options › Save) saves fonts with the document "if the fonts are allowed to be embedded," so another reader sees the same layout. The dependable habit: do the final TOC and TOA update and the PDF export on the same machine, in one sitting, and don't reopen the file to tweak it afterwards.

Error instead of entries: "no table of authorities entries found"

If the table area shows an error saying no table of authorities entries were found (users on Word forums quote it as "Error! No table of authorities entries found." — Microsoft's help pages don't document the exact wording), Word found no TA field it could use for that TOA field. The usual causes:

• No TA field has a long citation. Only fields with a \l switch create entries; a pasted field containing only \s adds pages to an existing entry but never creates one.
• Category mismatch. Microsoft's TOA field reference says a \c switch is required and the TOA field "collects only entries" marked with the same category number. A { TOA \c 2 } table stays empty if every TA field is \c 1.
• TA fields deleted or unlinked. Text cleaned up with paste-as-text, or fields converted to plain text, no longer contains TA fields.

Fix: turn on Show/Hide ¶, confirm at least one TA field per category has \l "…", make the \c numbers match, then press F9 on the table.

Why generating from the final PDF sidesteps pagination drift

Every cause above is a gap between Word's pagination at update time and the pages actually filed. A table built from the final PDF reads the page numbers printed on those pages, including roman-numeral front matter offsets, so hidden text, stale updates and font substitution on another computer can't change the result — as long as you index the PDF you file. The trade-off: if the brief changes, you regenerate from the new PDF. See table of authorities from a PDF.

Pre-filing page-number QA checklist