Export only table of contents

PDF extraction

External tools can be used to extract pages from the PDF file, e.g. pdftk. If the table of contents is on pages 5 and 6:

pdftk myreport.pdf cat 5-6 output myreport-toc.pdf

\include

If the main document is separated in several \include files, then the \tableofcontents goes into a separate file myreport-tableofcontents.tex:

\tableofcontents
\newpage

and in myreport.tex to include its toc:

\include{myreport-tableofcontents}

Then myreport-toc.tex only includes the table of contents:

\includeonly{myreport-tableofcontents}
\input{myreport}

With hyperref and links

If myreport.tex loads package hyperref, then the table of contents file myreport.toc also contains anchor names. That can be used to make inter document links. For example, the overview file for my bundle on CTAN, oberdiek.pdf includes the table of contents of all the packages in the bundle. The source file oberdiek.tex uses this technique, see the definition of \tocinclude in the example below. Of course both myreport.tex and myreport-toc.tex need hyperref.

Also needed:

• Any macros used in myreport.toc should be provided in myreport-toc.tex.

• The same class, fonts, page layout, … should be used.

• In case of the page number, the example uses zref to put the data for the page numbers in the .aux file of myreport. The label toc writes the page number for the start page of the table of contents. By using module zref-thepage also the visual appearance of all page numbers in the document are remembered. The .aux file of myreport is then read by zref-xr in myreport-toc.tex.

File myreport.tex:

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage{zref-abspage,zref-thepage}
\makeatletter
\newcommand*{\pagevaluelabel}[1]{%
  \zref@labelbyprops{toc}{abspage}%
}
\makeatother
\AtBeginDocument{%
  \addtocontents{toc}{\string\providecommand\string\pagevaluelabel[1]{}}%
  \addtocontents{toc}{\string\pagevaluelabel{toc}}%
}
\usepackage{hyperref}

\setcounter{secnumdepth}{4}

\begin{document}

\frontmatter

Title page
\newpage

\chapter*{Foreword}

\tableofcontents

\mainmatter

\chapter{Chapter}

\section{Section}

\subsection{Subsection}

\subsubsection{Subsubsection}

\end{document}

File myreport-toc.tex:

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{zref-xr}
\zexternaldocument[main:]{test}\relax

\makeatletter
\newcommand*{\tocinclude}[1]{%
  \chapter*{\contentsname
    \@mkboth{\MakeUppercase\contentsname}%
            {\MakeUppercase\contentsname}%
  }%
  \begingroup
    \makeatletter
    \def\@prj{#1}%
    \let\contentsline\foreign@contentsline
    \input{\@prj.toc}%
  \endgroup
}
\def\foreign@contentsline#1#2#3#4{%
  \ifx\\#4\\%
    \csname l@#1\endcsname{#2}{#3}%
  \else
    \ifHy@linktocpage
      \csname l@#1\endcsname{{#2}}{%
        \hyper@linkfile{#3}{\@prj.pdf}{#4}%
      }%
    \else
      \csname l@#1\endcsname{%
        \hyper@linkfile{#2}{\@prj.pdf}{#4}%
      }{#3}%
    \fi
  \fi
}%

\begin{document}
\makeatletter
\zref@refused{main:toc}
\setcounter{page}{%
  \numexpr\zref@extractdefault{main:toc}{abspage}{1}\relax
}
\renewcommand*{\thepage}{%
  \zref@extractdefault{main:thepage\number\value{page}}%
  {page}{\arabic{page}}%
}
\tocinclude{myreport}
\end{document}

First method (with shorttoc)

The easiest method is to use the command \anothertableofcontents from the shorttoc package, which loads and prints the ToC from an arbitrary .toc file.

If your main document is

my-report.tex

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{blindtext}

\begin{document}    
\tableofcontents    
\blinddocument    
\end{document} 

create a my-report-toc.tex with the following contents

my-report-toc.tex

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{shorttoc}
\usepackage{xspace}  % this shouldn't be needed in your document

\begin{document}
\anothertableofcontents{my-report}{Contents}{3}
\end{document} 

Compiling the latter, the resulting my-report-toc.pdf will contain the ToC of my-report.pdf:

---

Second method (with pdfpages)

Another method is to use the pdfpages package to load only the pages of the ToC in a different file. In this case, the pages containing the ToC must not contain anything else.

If your main document is

my-report.tex

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{blindtext}

\begin{document}    
\tableofcontents 
\clearpage   
\blinddocument    
\end{document} 

create a my-report-toc.tex with the following contents (replace pages=1 with the real range of pages of your ToC)

my-report-toc.tex

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{pdfpages}

\begin{document}
\includepdf[pages=1]{my-report.pdf}
\end{document} 

Compiling the latter, the resulting my-report-toc.pdf will contain the ToC of my-report.pdf: