Table of Contents Issue
When I went to upload the new edition of Castor’s Ordeal, KDP had issues with the table of contents. I knew it had to do with it being hyperlinked, which should have been an easy fix. It was not! Well, in the end, it could have been. Dang Chatty!
Me: How do I get my TOC in my word document to stop putting in hyperlinks. I've tried unselecting hyperlink under references-custom toc and it still adds it in the page number column and it's causes issues with my KDP upload for my print book. Those pages show a hand by the numbers in the KDP previewer.
Chatty: Yes, Word can be stubborn about this. For a print KDP file, the safest fix is to remove the TOC field/hyperlinks….
Try this:
Best fix: unlink the TOC
Click anywhere inside the Table of Contents.
Press Ctrl + A once or twice until the whole TOC is selected.
You do not need to select the whole manuscript, just the TOC.Press:
Ctrl + Shift + F9
That converts the TOC from an active Word field with clickable links into plain text.
This should remove the “hand” pointer in the KDP previewer because the page numbers are no longer hyperlink fields.
Me: Ctrl +Shift + F9 didn't work. The number column still shows the hyperlinks.
Chatty: That sounds like Word is not removing the underlying TOC field, or it is immediately regenerating it. I’ll give you the practical “make it dumb text” route, plus a backup way if Word is being ornery.
The issue is probably not you doing it wrong. In Word’s automatic TOC, the setting “Use hyperlinks instead of page numbers” mostly controls whether the chapter titles are hyperlinked. Word can still keep the page numbers as clickable TOC links. A Microsoft answer says that even without the hyperlink switch, TOC page numbers can remain linked.
Best fix for your situation: replace the automatic TOC with plain text…. (Chatty’s instructions, not shown)
Me: Okay, this sucks. It looks messy. Is there a way to save it removing all links?
Chatty: Ugh, yes — once it turns into a manual TOC, Word can make it look like a ransom note. The better route is to keep the automatic TOC’s appearance and strip the link behavior underneath it.
But Word does not have a normal “Save As → remove all links” option for DOCX. The cleanest way is to strip the hyperlinks while keeping the TOC formatting.
Do this on a copy of the manuscript.
Try this first: unlink the TOC field without pasting as plain text
Save a copy of the file.
Click inside the TOC.
Look for the little TOC box/dropdown at the top-left of the TOC.
Select the whole TOC field, not just the visible lines.
Press:
Ctrl + Shift + Fn + F9
Some keyboards need the Fn key too.
If it works, the TOC should still look nice — dot leaders, spacing, page numbers — but it becomes regular text.
If that still doesn’t work: use a Word macro…. (Lots of instructions on a macro, which looked extremely long and complicated.)
Me: Oh my word! After nearly two hours of messing with it, all I needed was to add the Fn key to the previous Ctrl + Shift + F9 and it deleted the links. Got it! The book is uploaded.
Chatty: Oh yay!! That is exactly the kind of Word nonsense that makes a person question reality. 😂
I’m so glad the Ctrl + Shift + Fn + F9 version worked and the book is uploaded…..
Me: Yes, Word nonsense is right. And KDP, as I have never had this issue occur. Good grief. Had to take the dogs for walk after all this before I move on to the next book. I made an editable master file of this one. I will be fine, though, because I don't intend to ever do a rewrite of the story. That was just done, and I have a plethora of other stories to focus on without going back to this one. People either like it or they don't. I can't change that. Moving forward.
Chatty: Exactly. That is a healthy publishing boundary right there.
You revised it, solved the formatting gremlin, made the editable master, uploaded the final copy, and took the dogs for a sanity walk. That is officially done enough to move forward.
And you’re right: once the story has had its real rewrite, there comes a point where more tinkering is not improvement, it’s just circling. Some readers will connect with it, some won’t, and that’s true no matter how many times you polish one more sentence.
Now it gets to stand on its own while you put your energy into the next book in the lineup. Word and KDP may have stolen time, but they did not win.
Note: I didn’t ask Chatty why the Fn key wasn’t mentioned earlier. I mean, I could have had it done in 10 minutes. Oh well. Learning lots in this publishing process!
