How to hide the table of content's heading?

Question

Is there any chance to hide the "Table of contents" heading that \tableofcontents generates?

If figured that \renewcommand\contentsname{} works (it sets the title to "", an empty string), but it does not remove the heading completely - the space is still blocked.

Doesn't work for me? I'm just getting that asterisk placed right below the heading. — Niko, Jun 02 '12 at 08:41
\tableofcontents* removes the ToC entry from the ToC itself in the memoir class. — lockstep, Jun 02 '12 at 08:47

Thorsten · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-23T06:13:16.920

43

If you are using the article class you can find the definition of \tableofcontents in the article.cls file:

\newcommand\tableofcontents{%
    \section*{\contentsname
        \@mkboth{%
           \MakeUppercase\contentsname}{\MakeUppercase\contentsname}}%
    \@starttoc{toc}%
    }

Now you can just remove the part where \section* is defined:

\documentclass{article}
\makeatletter
\renewcommand\tableofcontents{%
    \@starttoc{toc}%
}
\makeatother
\begin{document}
\tableofcontents
\section{test}
\section{test2}
\end{document}

edited Jun 23 '12 at 06:13

answered May 09 '12 at 15:48

Thorsten

12,872

1

How and why does this work? (Feel free to edit the answer into your answer) – doncherry Jun 22 '12 at 22:04
1

@doncherry Just take the original definition of \tableofcontents from article.cls and remove the code that creates the heading. – Thorsten Jun 23 '12 at 06:08
3

I applied current validated answer (see above) and it didn't work at first. I had a LaTeX Error: Something's wrong--perhaps a missing \item error message. All I had to do was to add spaces before \tableofcontents. – kogexo May 28 '18 at 08:45

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 26 '18 at 09:51

4

You say that using an empty name does not remove the space before the TOC. You can change that using the extra code below:

\renewcommand\contentsname{} % the empty name

\begingroup
\let\clearpage\relax
\vspace{-5cm} % the removed space. Set as appropriate
\tableofcontents
\endgroup

answered Oct 26 '18 at 09:51

luchonacho

4,161

1

A simple one-liner does it better (your solution didn't work for me) : \renewcommand\contentsname{\vspace*{-20pt}}. – Anthony Apr 28 '21 at 15:20

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 02 '12 at 09:51

4

If you want no TOC, but still want the "sidebar" created by hyperref you may do this:

\documentclass{...}
...
\usepackage{hyperref}

\begin{document}
\newsavebox{\hidden}\sbox{\hidden}{\vbox{\tablefocontents}}

<code>
\end{document}

answered Jun 02 '12 at 09:51

Peter Breitfeld

3,391

The bookmarks are produced independently of the presence of the TOC. – egreg Jun 02 '12 at 10:36
@egreg Thank you for this information, didn't know that. – Peter Breitfeld Jun 02 '12 at 10:44

How to hide the table of content's heading?

3 Answers3

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