For instance, you might want to display an introduction or summary at the beginning and collapse all other sections. When designing the document, you decide which sections are collapsed by default. You can move contiguous sections at the same time by selecting the headings first.
Then, select the Professional Looking Documents heading ( Figure H) and press + to cut the entire section (heading and text) to the Windows Clipboard.For instance, let’s move the Professional Documents section down a section as follows: Similar to the Navigation pane, you can use collapsed headings to make quick work of moving entire sections. This feature might help readers find the information they need quicker, but you can put it to good use when organizing a document. Keep this in mind when planning your documents or troubleshooting someone else’s.
Earlier, the feature failed to display three headings because of inconsistently applied headings. When troubleshooting, remember that this feature works only in Word 2013, and you must use the built-in heading styles.
These headings promote easy browsing when working with a long document. The collapsed sections resemble a table of contents (and are similar to the section headings you see using the Navigation pane). This time, Word displays all five headings.įigure D Consistent headings display all five headings. After doing so, use the Collapse All Headings command to see the results shown in Figure D. Then, apply Heading 1 to all five section headings. When planning your document, this feature doesn’t care if you use Heading 1 or Heading 4, as long as you apply it consistently as the highest applied heading.įigure C Inconsistent headings return unexpected results.īefore you continue, display all of the content by right-clicking either heading, choose Expand/Collapse, and then selecting Expand All Headings. The same goes for the two headings that use the Normal style. All other heading styles are subordinate and the feature hides them. This feature works with the highest hierarchical heading. Word is doing exactly what you told it to. There’s nothing wrong and there’s no bug at work. If you were expecting to see all five headings (sans the paragraphs) you might be surprised at the results shown in Figure C. Select Collapse All Headings ( Figure B).Right-click any heading and choose Expand/Collapse.Now, let’s see how this feature works as follows:
Button-quick Layout is Normal with some manual formatting.įigure A The sample document with five mismatched headings.Professional Looking Documents is Heading 2.The document shown in Figure A has five paragraphs and five headings using a mix of (built-in) styles: docx file or work with a simple document of your own.
This feature isn’t available in older versions of Word.
I’m using Word 2013 on a Windows 7 system. You’re probably already familiar with collapsible headings they’re widely used in web applications and pages and social media. If the content has the potential to overwhelm your readers, collapse the headings by default and let them decide what to read. Users can quickly decide what they need to read without the distraction of wading through content that doesn’t concern them. Now, you can expand this idea using Word 2013’s collapsible headings. It’s a helpful feature when working with a long document.
The article “ Use Word 2010’s new Navigation pane to efficiently browse and organize documents” shows you how to use Word’s Navigation pane to browse and organize documents. Susan Harkins explains how to use collapsible headings to turn long complex documents into a simple list of headings that readers can use as a table of contents. How to use Word 2013’s collapsible headings