If you post a long video to YouTube, it is a good idea to add a Table of Contents to the description. This helps viewers go to specific topics quickly. In my case, I post the video link + TOC on my blog as well. The link format for YouTube and regular HTML are totally different. That is why I made an Excel based YouTube TOC creator.
YouTube TOC Creator Usage
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- Upload your video to YouTube
- Copy the Sharing link for the video from YouTube:
It looks like this :
- Download the Excel file YouTube TOC Creator V3.xlsx
- Paste the link in the cell B2
- Overwrite the Sample row with your data
- In the first column specify the Topic name
- In the next 3 columns specify the Hour, Min, Sec for the point where the topic begins. All three must be integer numbers.
- Hours can be 0 to 12 and minutes / seconds can be 0 to 59.
DO NOT enter the unit. For example if you are entering 12 minutes, just type 12 in the Minutes column. Do not type 12 min - Add multiple topics and start time as required
- Now you get three types of Table of Contents
The TOC data is in an Excel Table. I have provided 35 rows. If you want more rows, right click inside the table and choose Insert – Rows above.
If you type the topic and time data outside the table, formulas will not be calculated.
Types of Table of Contents
- Just URLs (green column)
The URL requires time converted to seconds. This is done automatically for you. - YouTube Description data (yellow column)
In YouTube description, you just need to type the topic followed by the start time in hh:mm:ss format. This is automatically created. - HTML Links (red column)
In case you want a proper HTML <a href> tag – typically for embedding in a web page, use the red column.
Choose the desired rows from the required column and paste the data to the desired location. That’s it.
I hope you find it useful. If you have any ideas for enhancing the YouTube TOC Creator, let me know (post comments).
2 Responses
Thanks so much for sharing this. I used it for a couple of live YT videos. I only made a small change in your formula in column G to get the times first, then the topic. It looks better aligned for my personal taste. This is the formula I used: =IF(TRIM([@Topic])=””,””,TEXT([@Hour],”00″)&”:”&TEXT([@Min],”00″)&”:”&TEXT([@Sec],”00″&” – “)&[@Topic])
Check out the output in this video description: https://youtu.be/Ub9o7P7laWg
Thanks again for sharing!
Glad that you found it useful. Sure. Customize as required.