How to add table of contents in Rmarkdown?

The syntax is

---title: "Sample Document"output:  html_document:    toc: true    theme: united---

in the documentation. Make sure this is at the beginning of your document. Also make sure your document actually has headers otherwise R can't tell what you want in the table of contents.

Syntax with more options:

---title: "Planets"author: "Manoj Kumar"date: "`r format(Sys.time(), '%B %d, %Y')`"output:   html_document:    toc: true # table of content true    toc_depth: 3  # upto three depths of headings (specified by #, ## and ###)    number_sections: true  ## if you want number sections at each table header    theme: united  # many options for theme, this one is my favorite.    highlight: tango  # specifies the syntax highlighting style    css: my.css   # you can add your custom css, should be in same folder---

If you are using pdf_document, you might want to add table of contents in a new page, which toc: true does not allow. It puts the table of contents right after the document title, author and date--because it is in yaml.

If you want to have it in a new page, you have to use some latex language. Here is what I did.

---title: \vspace{3.5in}"Title"author: "Name"date: "`r Sys.Date()`"output:   pdf_document:      fig_caption: true      number_sections: true---\newpage # adds new page after title\tableofcontents # adds table of contents\listoffigures\listoftables\newpage

So, after yaml (the chunk between ---), I added a new page using \newpage, then a table of contents using \tableofcontents, a list of figures using \listoffigures, a list of tables \listoftables, and a new page before everything else.

Note, \vspace{3in} in the title adds vertical space of 3 inch from the top before printing yaml (title, etc.).

Read more here: https://www.sharelatex.com/learn/Table_of_contents