Recently, I was teaching a class about creating and generating a Table of Contents (TOC) and a Table of Authorities (TOA) in Word at the Department of Justice, where I work part-time as a contract trainer / template designer.  One of the legal assistants in the class asked me what to do if she made a mistake while marking a citation — such as a court case — for inclusion in the TOA.  She said someone had told her she had to delete the resulting TOA code and start over.

Not so.  It’s quick and easy to edit the codes themselves.  I’ve been demonstrating that trick since the 1990s, when I taught computer classes for legal professionals at UCLA Extension and the University of West Los Angeles.

Here’s how it works.  After you mark a citation, Word automatically turns on Show / Hide (Show / Hide is the feature that displays non-printing…