41 Comments
User's avatar
Robert M. Ford's avatar

Great tip! I knew the 'how' (the 'old school' html way, at least), but you really claried the 'why' from a Substack perspective. Thanks!

Expand full comment
Casandra Campbell's avatar

It is the old school way!

Expand full comment
Robert M. Ford's avatar

I appreciate that thanks to you, I now know what the Substack floating links work. I'd been wondering about those. :-)

Expand full comment
Casandra Campbell's avatar

I can't remember how I figure it out but I'm glad I did haha

Expand full comment
Harshi Peiris, Ph.D.'s avatar

Oh wow thank you!! This is great to know.

Expand full comment
Therapy Truck's avatar

This is such a great idea. Looking forward to implementing.

Thanks❣️

Expand full comment
Shannon McNamara's avatar

Adobe Express one-page websites are very similar (look/feel/features) to Substack. I always teach this feature to my students over there!

Expand full comment
Casandra Campbell's avatar

Oh that's neat, I haven't used Adobe Express!

Expand full comment
Rachel Lipson's avatar

This is so great! I just used it to put a TOC on a post I wrote a little while back on tips for visiting NOLA using credit card points and miles and it worked SO well! Many thanks :)

https://brooklynfamilytravelers.substack.com/p/the-new-orleans-edit

Expand full comment
Veronica Pullen's avatar

This is such a neat workaround for the lack of ‘insert table of contents’. Thank you.

Expand full comment
Andrea Amador's avatar

@Cassandra Campbell Thank you for this brilliant idea. Love this. Can’t wait to share.

Expand full comment
jvon.world's avatar

🔥🔥🔥

Expand full comment
Justin's avatar

Thanks, I will keep this in mind.

Expand full comment
Perzen Patel's avatar

I do this for all my food writing because it often follows the story/food history/recipe format and allows the “just give me the recipe” grinches to get to where they need to be fast. Great post

Expand full comment
Andi O.'s avatar

Great to see an article about how to create a TOC for your text posts!

👉 The trick to seeing the link to a header (while in edit mode) is to:

1. click on the header text

2. hover just to the left of the first letter in the header

3. scroll up until you see the icon (without moving your mouse from that spot)

Note: the link icon will always appear in the upper area of the article (left of the header text, in a skinny margin), so if you have a looooooonnnnnggg article, you will need to head to the top while keeping your cursor within the margin just left of the header text until you see it.

I created a TOC for my page here:

https://giglfin.substack.com/p/byb-book-recommendations

...it works great for my long list of book recommendations by topic.

Expand full comment
Casandra Campbell's avatar

You figured out the trick! Thanks for sharing!

Expand full comment
Nikki Finlay's avatar

That’s helpful.

Expand full comment
Traiano Welcome's avatar

This is pretty worthless. Manually creating ToC defeats the point. Even a basic Wiki like Mediawiki or Confluence will simply generate a ToC from Headings and subheadings.

Come on substack - level up!

Expand full comment
Bx's avatar

This is super helpful !

Expand full comment
Victor Vasile's avatar

Actually you can check if it works properly before publishing, any time by using the "secret draft link" in the editor.

Expand full comment
Casandra Campbell's avatar

That's never worked for me but very cool if it works for you! I always get a "Page note found" response until the article is live.

Expand full comment
𝕃𝕖𝕪𝕝𝕒 ℤ𝕖𝕟𝕠𝕟's avatar

When I click on your table of contents links, a new window always opens.

Am I the only (mobile user) this happens to?

Expand full comment
Casandra Campbell's avatar

That's likely because you're in the app (which uses substack.com links) and I'm using links to my domain name. Substack isn't great at redirecting between the two.

Expand full comment
Your Plastics BFF's avatar

Can you create a Table of Contents for the entire website?

Expand full comment
Casandra Campbell's avatar

You could create an article that acts as a table of contents for you publication. Here's one I created that links to all my a Substack content as an example. https://www.reallygoodbusinessideas.com/p/start-here-for-substack

Expand full comment