Adding unnumbered sections to TOC

Question

I have many unnumbered sections in my report (more than 100), all created with:

\section*{section name}

I want to find a way to easily add them all to the TOC (specifically to a minitoc). Since I use the * to remove the numbering, they won't appear in TOC. I found out in minitoc documentation that I should use:

\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{repeat here section title}

However, I don't want to have a duplicated title in every section, or even to change all the involved files to add those already written sections to the TOC. How to add those sections' names to the minitoc without using the addcontentsline command? Is it possible?

Answer 1

The easiest way to do this is to use \section but to change secnumdepth so that they don't get numbered.

\documentclass{article}
\setcounter{secnumdepth}{0}
\begin{document}
\tableofcontents
\section{ADSF}
\section{Foo}
\end{document}

Answer 2

Another solution using \addcontentsline{toc}{section}{repeat here section title} relies on nameref. In fact I'm numbering every section (chapters and so on) with a label. So you could use:

\section*{Introduction}
\label{sec:intro}
\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{\nameref{sec:intro}}

It's only a local change and is persistent to names' change of your section.

Answer 3

If you are using KOMA-Script the easiest way is to use these built in commands:

\addpart \addchap \addsec

Which work just like \part* \chapter* \section* while also being added to the toc.

Answer 4

What you can do is to redefine your chapters (or sections). Here I copy what I did for my report. I redefined \chapter* and defined a \chapter**

The latter is the old \chapter*, while the former is an unnembered chapter, but added to the toc.

 \let\@originalchapter\chapter
     \def\chapter{
                 \@ifstar\chapterstar\@originalchapter
                 }
     \def\chapterstar{
                 \@ifstar\chapter@nonum@notoc\chapter@nonum
                 }
 \newcommand\chapter@nonum[2][]{
         \ifthenelse{\isempty{#1}}{
          \cleardoublepage
          \phantomsection
          \addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{\protect\numberline{}#2}
          \@originalchapter*{#2}
          \chaptermark{#2}
          }{
          \cleardoublepage
          \phantomsection
          \addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{\protect\numberline{}#1}
          \@originalchapter*[#1]{#2}
          \chaptermark{#1}
       }
  }
 \newcommand\chapter@nonum@notoc[2][]{
    \ifthenelse{\isempty{#1}}{
        \@originalchapter*{#2}
        \chaptermark{#2}
     }{
     \@originalchapter*[#1]{#2}
     \chaptermark{#1}
   }
}

\let\@originaltableofcontents\tableofcontents
  \def\tableofcontents{
   \let\@toclocaloriginalchapter\chapter
   \def\chapter{\@toclocaloriginalchapter*}
   \@originaltableofcontents
   \def\chapter{\@toclocaloriginalchapter}
}