TOC for long outlines

[Shauna Kelly]

"Built in Heading styles" and "Define styles based on your formatting".

Do these settings make a difference?

Yes they do make a difference, and not a good one! Turn them off
immediately! If you leave them on, Word "guesses" as to what you're
trying to do. For example, if you create a short paragraph of a few
words and make it bold, Word will try to decide if this is a heading and
allocate a heading style to that paragraph. Or, Word may decide it's a
caption, even though it's nowhere near a picture or a table. Since Word
isn't very good at making this kind of guess, and since you want to be
in control of your document, turn them both off.

Hope this helps.

Shauna Kelly. Microsoft MVP.
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word
Melbourne, Australia

Hi Bruce,

Thanks for your suggestions, I investigated the AutoFormat As You Type tab of Tools/AutoCorrect
Options, and the box for "Set left- and first-indent with tabs

andbackspaces" was already checked. Two boxes that were not checked
were "Built in Heading styles" and "Define styles based on your
formatting". Do these settings make a difference?

To answer your first question, Cindy's criticism on the lack of

pertinent information was well taken, and I responded several times with
my operating system and Word version. The first time the server tossed
my posting even though it promised me it would post it in five minutes,
and the most recent time was the posting you just replied to.

I am currently working on a Win2K platform running Word 2002, because,

as described by Cindy, it handles these issues more easily than the Word
2000 application I was using.

Thanks for your help with this, I am now producing tables of contents,

and just need to iron out a few wrinkles using this system of styles.

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?TWlrZSBF?=,

The only problem I've uncovered with using heading styles for

generating an outline is with autonumbering. If I have an existing
outline, say five levels, and I make a change on one of the heading 3
entries and hit enter, instead of dropping down a line and starting a new
heading 3 entry, Word drops down to a blank line, no style. I have to
tell Word to outline number the line and then tell it what level to use.
Before changing to heading styles, Word just dropped down a line, created
the same level and incremented the number (or letter).Are you working in the Outline view when this happens? Or in Page Layout?

If you're in Page Layout (or Normal, for that matter), when you press
ENTER after a heading style, by default Word will format the following
paragraph as "Normal" style. This is part of the style definition for the
Heading styles (because usually, when you type headings, you want some
text underneath). If you work in the Outline view, you should continue to
get a Heading style when you press Enter.

In order to continue with a heading style, go into the "Modify" box for
each heading style and change the "Style for following paragraph" setting
to the heading style you think you'll usually want when you press ENTER.
for Heading 1, for example, you may usually expect to have a second
level, so choose "Heading 2". If a number of Heading 2 may follow one
another, choose "Heading 2" for "Heading 2". And so.

Note, too, that you can use the keyboard to promote/demote realtively
quickly: Shift+Alt+Right/Left arrow.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Sep 30 2003)
http://www.mvps.org/word

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[Mike E]

Hi Cindy,

Thanks so much for your suggestion to "modify" and change "style for following paragraph". It worked exactly as you said and now the outline behaves exactly as I wish.

Thanks again to all that helped me tame long outlines.