Create a table of authorities

The feature or some of the options described in this Help topic are only available if support for English (U.S.), Canadian French, or Dutch is enabled through Microsoft Office Language Settings.

  1. Mark citations (citation: A reference to a specific legal case, statute, or other legal document.) to add to a table of authorities (table of authorities: A list of the references in a legal document, such as references to cases, statutes, and rules, along with the numbers of the pages the references appear on.).


  1. Select the first citation in your document.

For example, select "Forrester v. Craddock, 51 Wn. 2d 315 (1957)."

  1. Press ALT+SHIFT+I.
  2. In the Selected text box, edit the long citation as you want it to appear in the table of authorities.

 Note   If you want to format the text, right-click the text you want to format in the Selected text box, and click Font. Select the formatting options that you want to use.

  1. In the Category box, click the category that applies to the citation.
  2. In the Short citation box, edit the text so that it matches the short citation that you want Microsoft Word to search for in the document.

For example, enter "Forrester v. Craddock."

  1. To mark a single citation, click Mark. To mark all long and short citations that match those displayed in the Mark Citation dialog box, click Mark All.
  2. To find the next citation in the document, click Next Citation.


  1. Click where you want to insert the table of authorities.
  2. To make sure that the document is paginated correctly, you need to hide field codes (field: A set of codes that instructs Microsoft Word to insert text, graphics, page numbers, and other material into a document automatically. For example, the DATE field inserts the current date.) and hidden text. If the TA (Table of Authorities Entry) fields are visible, click Show/Hide Paragraph mark Button image on the Standard toolbar.
  3. On the Insert menu, point to Reference, click Index and Tables, and then click the Table of Authorities tab.
  4. In the Category box, click the category you want to include in your table of authorities. To include all categories, click All.
  5. Do one of the following:
  • To use one of the available designs, click a design in the Formats box.
  • To use a custom table of authorities layout, choose the options you want.


To use additional options for customizing a table of authorities, you can use fields. For example, you can build the table of authorities for only part of the document.

  1. Select any other table of authorities options you want.


  • If you add, delete, move, or edit a citation or other text in a document, you should update the table of authorities. For example, if you edit a citation and move it to a different page, you need to make sure that the table of authorities reflects the revised citation and page number. To update the table of authorities, click to the left of it and press F9.
  • Don’t modify the entries in the finished table of authorities; if you do, your changes will be lost when you update the table of authorities.
Applies to:
Word 2003