This may also apply to Open Office.
Go to the format menu and select styles and formatting. a window or something will come up. one of the tabs on it is for page types. Duplicate the default type and call it something else. Then, go to the start of your document at the very top of the page and under insert, select manual break. A window will open that will have a drop down menu of the page types. Change it from [none] to the page type you just created. At the bottom of the window, in the second little box from the left, it lists page type. so when you’re on your new blank page, it should say default and when you go to the second page, it should say the name of your new type of page.
Next, go to the first page of your text and go to the insert menu and select footer and it will have next to that your two page types. Check the one that describes the main body of your text. It will hopefully make you a footer, which it will then stick your cursor in. then under the insert menu, go to fields and the page number. The popup will have something asking about style, make sure it’s set to 1 2 3, etc. and it will have something about starting with a specific page number. set that to 1.
Then go back to that first empty, still blank page and insert two manual breaks so you have three blank pages at the start of your document. Go the middle of those pages and go to the insert menu and then select indexes and tables and then indexes and tables and then table of contents
You’re nearly there. Go back to the styles and formatting window and go to the paragraph styles tag. Right click on the one called heading1 and select modify. It will give you a window asking about spacing, fonts, etc. Set it to look like every heading you’ve used for your chapter titles. If they’re 14 point centred times new roman, then make it like that. then go to heading2 and modify it so it looks like your subheadings you’ve used for chapter sections and keep doing this for all the heading levels you’ve used.
Now, lastly, go through your text and highlight all your headings. So at the starts of chapter 1, highlight your title “why i’m awesome” (or whatever you called it) and then, in the styles and formatting window, double click on the heading 1. This will switch that title to have the heading 1 formatting, which, if you did it right, will look the same as it did before. Then go to your subheading and select it and double click on heading2 in the styles and formatting window. Go through your entire document changing your heading to use the heading1, heading2, etc. When you’ve got everything, go back up to your table of contents page and right click on the table of contents. A menu will pop up and one of the options will be to update the table of contents. Do that and it should list all fo your headings and subheadings. If you’re missing some of them, then you forgot to change it in the document.
And of course, the best way to do this is to use the headings and stuff from when you first start writing your document, so keep that in mind for next time.