How can I add abstract and acknowledgement pages into the table of contents?

Question

I followed Mike's solution from my first question:

Roman numeral page numbering

My next question is how to add entries (for the abstract and acknowledgements pages) into the table of contents.

Answer 1

Assuming that the abstract and acknowledgement contents is typeset using a \chapter*{...}, you could do the following:

\chapter*{Abstract}%
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{\numberline{}Abstract}%
...
\chapter*{Acknowledgements}%
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{\numberline{}Acknowledgements}%
...

This will add a chapter-level (chapter) entry to the table of contents (toc) without a chapter number (\numberline{}).

Answer 2

While you can manually add an entry to the TOC by \addtocontents or \addcontentsline, the order of commands can be important, especially

• if you use hyperref, to get the hyperlink above the heading, not below
• or if you add a section to the TOC, which is done by a macro but several pages long, such as by \listoffigures, \listoftables or \bibliography. A wrong order would add the last page to the TOC

So

• use \addtocontents or \addcontentsline before \chapter* of \listof...
• ensure the required page break before \addtocontents or \addcontentsline

• for hyperref, add an anchor for the target

  \cleardoublepage
  \phantomsection
  \addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Abstract}
  \chapter*{Abstract}
  

If you need that several times, you could define a macro for it.

Regarding the commands:

• \cleardoublepage ends the page, prints out remaining floats if necessary, and ensures that the following text starts on a right hand page, as chapters in books commonly do, if in twoside mode. \clearpage, in contrast, would start the new page on a left or a right side.
• \phantomsection is a command of the hyperref package, which creates an anchor at this location, similar to \hypertarge, which can be referred to - \addcontentsline does it implicitely. Without \phantomsection, \addcontentsline would refer to the previous anchor which could be undesired.

The package tocbibind makes putting commonly added chapters/sections (bibliography, TOC, index) to the TOC easier. It's integrated in the memoir class, while KOMA-Script classes support this purpose by class options such as bibliography=totoc.

Answer 3

Instead of tinkering with \cleardoublepage, \phantomsection, and \addcontentsline, I suggest to

• use \chapter (the non-starred version) also for the Abstract and Acknowledgements,

• set the secnumdepth counter to -2 (i.e., no sectioning level is numbered) before the Abstract,

• resetsecnumdepth to 2 (default for the report class) before the first proper chapter.

Works also with hyperref.

\documentclass{report}

\usepackage{hyperref}

\begin{document}

\tableofcontents

\setcounter{secnumdepth}{-2}% default for "report" is 2

\chapter{Abstract}

\chapter{Acknowledgements}

\setcounter{secnumdepth}{2}

\chapter{First}

\end{document}