Is there an easy way to create a table of contents in a multi-column format?

Question

I have a document which lists many sections. It is a list of release note versions for an application and the items which apply to our company implementation. I've been tasked to create a TOC. I find that because of the number of versions tracked by our staff, the TOC is one long vertical list. I was wondering if there's a way to format it so the TOC list is broken up into several columns instead of just one column with lots of white space next to it.

Thanks for your help.

G'day!
Efleda

Julie d_Antin _Elements__bsgnak · Accepted Answer

Hi @Efleda Brophy ,

I don't think there's a way to display it in columns, but you can configure the TOC to be presented 'flat' instead of a list, which will avoid the long list display.

You can also choose to exclude some of the sub headers in the advanced settings, which could help shorten the length of the TOC.

Barbara Szczesniak · Accepted Answer

@Efleda Brophy Is there some organization to the pages in your page tree? If so, you could always use one or more 2- or 3-section layouts and insert separate TOC macros or child display macros in each panel of the layout such that each shows the child pages of a top-level page or use the include and exclude parameters of the macro to define some other structure that makes sense in your space. See https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/insert-the-table-of-contents-macro/ and https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/insert-the-children-display-macro/ for more information.

You might also wrap these in expand macros to put the separate TOCs one after another on the page (without layout sections). Users could then expand and collapse the different sections of the TOC, as needed. See https://support.atlassian.com/confluence-cloud/docs/insert-the-expand-macro/