hide section numbering but continue adding-up

Question

When I hide a section with the asterisk it doesn't show the number in the heading and the section doesn't show up in the TOC.

How to hide a section but have the counter beeing added-up correctly so that \thesection gives the correct number of the section?

Answer 1

I don’ think there’s a finished macro/package for that but you can increment the counter either with \stepcounter{section} or with \refstepcounter{section} which increments the counter and updates the belonging \ref-lables.

So If you need a command for this try

\newcommand{\unnumsec}[1]{\refstepcounter{section}\section*{#1}}

or if you’re using KOMA-Script

\newcommand{\unnumsec}[1]{\refstepcounter{section}\addsec{#1}}

The main difference between \section* and \addsec is that the latter also sets the headmarks and generates a ToC entry, where \section* only prints text formatted like the section headline. (See the scrguien.pdf [or the german scrguide] for more information about \addsec command)

Answer 2

Adapting the answer from this question on stackoverflow:

Option 1 (use \section*, then \addtocounter to increment section counter):

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}
\tableofcontents
\section{uno}
\section{dos}
\section*{hide}
\addtocounter{section}{1}
\section{tres}
\end{document}

Option 2 (suppress \addcontentsline temporarily):

\documentclass{article}

\newcommand{\nocontentsline}[3]{}
\newcommand{\tocless}[2]{\bgroup\let\addcontentsline=\nocontentsline#1{#2}\egroup}

\begin{document}
\tableofcontents
\section{uno}
\section{dos}
\tocless\section{hide}
\section{tres}
\end{document}

Answer 3

In your comment you say "even better allow me to place the number in the heading manually or leave it completly out".

That one's easy:

\renewcommand{\thesection}{}

The section counter gets incremented, but no number is displayed. (You still get the number in the TOC, though; not sure if you want that.)

Answer 4

I use this redefined command to create sections without numbering but it keeps adding-up:

\newcommand{\sect}[1] {\section*{#1}\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{#1}\addtocounter{section}{1}}

Also in table of contents, of course.