Create Table of Contents in Beamer

This lesson teaches you how to create and customize your presentation outline in Beamer

1. How to add the table of contents to beamer?

Creating the table of contents in Beamer can be done with the same manner as in standard LaTeX. The first thing that we should do is to structure our presentation using the commands \section{} and \subsection{} (\section*{} and \subsection*{}, to hide it from table of contents). It should be noted that with beamer class these commands will not create a heading at the position where we use them.

Step 1: Organize and structure your presentation using sections and subsections

Let’s assume we have the following structure:

• Problem statement
• Existing results
  • Method 1
  • Method 2
• Comparative study
• References (This section will be removed from table of contents)

Here is the corresponding LaTeX code to this structure:

% Presentation structure
\section{Problem statement}
\section{Existing results}
    \subsection{Method 1}
    \subsection{Method 2}
    \subsection{Method 3}
\section{Comparative study}
\section*{References}

Step 2: Create the outline frame

You are already familiar with frame environment which has been used in this lesson to create the title page. With the same manner, we will create a frame and add a title to it, let’s say “Outline” or “Presentation plan”. Then we will add \tableofcontents command inside it to print all sections and subsections of the presentation. Here is a complete code:

% Create a Table of Contents in Beamer
\documentclass{beamer}
% Theme choice:
\usetheme{AnnArbor}
\usecolortheme{crane}

% Title page details: 
\title{How to make “outline” frame in Beamer?} 
\author{latex-beamer.com}
\date{\today}

\begin{document}

% Title page frame
\begin{frame}
    \titlepage 
\end{frame}

% Outline frame
\begin{frame}{Outline}
    \tableofcontents
\end{frame}

% Presentation structure
\section{Problem statement}
\section{Existing results}
    \subsection{Method 1}
    \subsection{Method 2}
    \subsection{Method 3}
\section{Comparative study}
\section*{References}

\begin{frame}
% to enforce entries in the table of contents
\end{frame}
 
\end{document}

Compiling this code yields:

Comments:

• We used the theme "AnnArbor" with the color style "crane".
• References section is removed from table of contents, thanks to the command \section*{}.
• Under each section or subsection you should create different slides that correspond to it

2. Hide subsections from table of contents

Sometimes, it’s convenient to remove all subsections from the table of contents. This can be done easily using the following line code:

% Hide subsections from table of contents
\begin{frame}{Outline}
    \tableofcontents[hideallsubsections]
\end{frame}

Using this in the previous code, we get the following presentation outline:

3. Recurring table of contents

If you wish to show table of contents with highlighted current section before starting every section you can use the following code:

% Outline frame
\begin{frame}{Outline}
    \tableofcontents
\end{frame}

% Current section
\AtBeginSection[ ]
{
\begin{frame}{Outline}
    \tableofcontents[currentsection]
\end{frame}
}

and here how we get before every section:

• The option currentsection yields all sections except the current one to be shown in a semi-transparent way. Moreover, all subsections except those in the current section are shown in the semi-transparent way.

4. Display section by section of table of contents

If we would like to show the table of contents in an incremental way, we can add the option pausesections to the \tableofcontents command. Here is the corresponding LaTeX code:

% Outline frame
\begin{frame}{Outline}
    \tableofcontents[pausesections]
\end{frame}

This yields the following effect triggered by mouse click or keyboard next slide key.

Summary

• In this lesson, we learned how to create the outline frame of our presentation. \tableofcontents command allows us to print all sections and subsection and it has to be inside a frame environment.
• We learned also how to create recurring table of contents which is displayed before each section.
• At the end, we learned how to display the table of contents section by section.

Next Lesson: Eight Beamer Environments you Should be Familiar With!