MS Word TOC that references # pages rather than page number

Question

We frequently need to write specifications in Word which require a TOC that refers to the total number of pages in a section, rather than the page number. E.g.,

Section                    No. Pages
01010 Summary of Work..............5
01025 Prices.......................2
01400 Quality Control..............1
01700 Contract Close Out...........2

A wrinkle is that each section is a separate file. To date, we've been writing or TOC by hand, which has introduced every error imaginable. Is there an MS feature that populates a TOC with page totals? If not, I've done a little VB in Office, so wouldn't be opposed to that route as need be, as long as it was usable by our low tech users.

Related question - all the section files are in the same folder. It would be nice if the TOC loaded every file in a folder, rather than having to specify each one. Is this a feature of Word or would this require VB? We tried a master document with links to subdocuments, but since the number of section files ebbs and flows with each project, the approach required too much maintenance for our Wordophobes.

Answer 1

You may well be able to pull something together by using the same technique described here to add a prefix to the page numbers in a TOC.

In your case you would activate the TOC switch to exclude page numbers and insert your page totals instead by adding your own prefix to heading paragraphs. If each of your documents only include one section you could try a SECTIONPAGES field or otherwise include a uniquely named bookmark at the end of each document and reference it using a PAGEREF field.