On Thursday, December 9, 2021 at 10:47:39 AM UTC-6 Nick Bart wrote:

AFAIK, pandoc can only insert a placeholder for a ToC into a docx document, but not create a full ToC itself.

The latter requires opening the document in MS Word, LibreOffice or a similar program and updating the ToC manually. (In LibreOffice, the menu command is Tools > Update > Update All; MS Word instructions are at https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/update-a-table-of-contents-6c727329-d8fd-44fe-83b7-fa7fe3d8ac7a.)

Updating from the command line is possible, too (at least when using LibreOffice [LO]).

This involves a macro like the following (which borrows ideas from https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/how-to-automatically-update-indices-in-headless-mode/11878), saved in LO under, e.g., "Standard.Module2.UpdateAllIndexes":

```
sub UpdateAllIndexes(sDocUrl as string)

dim oDocument as object
dim dispatcher as object

dim propExp(0) as new com.sun.star.beans.PropertyValue

dim sNewUrl as string

Dim FileProperties(1) As New com.sun.star.beans.PropertyValue
FileProperties(0).Name = "Hidden"
FileProperties(0).Value = True

if fileExists(sDocUrl) then
oDocument = starDesktop.loadComponentFromUrl(convertToUrl(sDocUrl), "_blank", 0, FileProperties())
dispatcher = createUnoService("com.sun.star.frame.DispatchHelper")
dispatcher.executeDispatch(oDocument.CurrentController.Frame, ".uno:UpdateAllIndexes", "", 0, Array())
GlobalScope.BasicLibraries.LoadLibrary("Tools")
propExp(0).Name = "FilterName"
propExp(0).Value = "MS Word 2007 XML"
sNewUrl = GetFileNameWithoutExtension(sDocUrl) & "_updated.docx"
oDocument.storeToURL(convertToUrl(sNewUrl), propExp())
end if

end sub
```

This macro can then be run from the command line (the following works on macOS):

```
/Applications/LibreOffice.app/Contents/MacOS/soffice --invisible --nofirststartwizard --headless --norestore "macro:///Standard.Module2.UpdateAllIndexes(/full/path/to/file.docx)"
```

… creating a new file `/full/path/to/file_updated.docx`.