Google-docs – How to format Table of contents automatically in Google Docs

You can create a table of Contents in Google Docs;

1. Add headings to your document by clicking Format > Paragraph styles in the toolbar, and selecting a heading.
2. Click Table of contents from the Insert menu. The table of contents appears wherever you've clicked in the document, so make sure you place your cursor where you want to add the table of contents. If you need to move the table of contents, select it as you would select text and either move it with your cursor or cut it and paste it.
3. You can continue to add headings to your document or change current headings. However, if you'd like a change to become part of the table of contents, you need to click first the table and then the Update now button.
4. Each item in your table of contents links to the titled sections of your document that use the heading styles (that you added in step 1 above).

http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=106342

Hope this helps.

I just found a possible work-around for the original question. It isn't elegant, but it may work.

In each of your section headings (ie, in the text, which are then used to generate the TOC automatically), add a tab and the page number. You have to type in the page number manually, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't pay to get too fancy with placement, adjusting tab stops, etc.

Now, if you refresh the TOC, you get the page number separated from the heading by a tab. (When I tried to adjust the tab stops in the TOC, I got various errors.)

If you don't want the page numbers to appear next to the headings in the body of the document, highlight them there and change the text color to the background color of the document (usually white). The numbers are still there, and will still show up in the TOC, but you can't see them elsewhere.

Unfortunately, the page numbers won't flow as you edit the document, so do this just before final publication.

Again, not elegant -- not in appearance or in process -- but if you must have physical page numbers in a printed document, it should do the trick.