Aligning numbers in Table of Contents in Microsoft Word

I am trying to create a table of contents page for my thesis. However, when am specifying my page numbers, am not able to set them in a straight line at all, compared to the previous entry. I have pasted an image of part of the problem am facing: I am not able to align the numbers with space or tab as well, because somewhere the formatting seem to go wrong. Can you please help me? Am facing a deadline, but this maybe really silly, still am not able to do it.

microsoft-word
microsoft-word-2007
alignment

2,350 6 6 gold badges 23 23 silver badges 21 21 bronze badges asked Jul 24, 2013 at 9:36 Lakshmi Narayanan Lakshmi Narayanan 231 2 2 gold badges 4 4 silver badges 10 10 bronze badges check this out and see if any of that helps Commented Jul 24, 2013 at 9:42 That was fast and awesome. Thanks @Raystafarian Commented Jul 24, 2013 at 9:43

@LakshmiNarayanan: I'm guessing you're creating the TOC manually. Is there any reason for this? You do know you can just click the References tab and the Table of Contents button and Word will create on for you, all perfectly aligned and kept up to date automatically. The hierarchy of the entries are based on the styles you set, e.g. Heading 1, Heading 2.

Commented Jul 24, 2013 at 9:52

@LakshmiNarayanan: Custom styles can be made to work with the TOC via the Paragraph->Outline level property in the style editor. The main advantage of an automatic TOC is that you do not need to worry about keeping it up to date so I think you may regret doing it manually in the end :-)

Commented Jul 24, 2013 at 10:15

@LakshmiNarayanan: Right-click the style where it appears in the toolbar and choose Modify. . In the style editor that appears you can then change pretty much anything; this is the same dialog where you can set the Outline level setting I mentioned before that affects if and where the item will appear in a TOC.