10 Reasons to Outline Your Next Long Document | Microsoft Office Word 2003 Inside Out (Bpg-Inside Out)

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Remember those awful research projects you had to do in junior high school, when you had to turn in first your outline, then your note cards, then your draft, and then your final? Composing in Word isn't like that, thank goodness. Once you create an outline in Word, you've got something to start with. Not something you'll type once and then type again later—but something you can use to build your document, edit it, and organize (or reorganize) it. And with that outline, you can even move seamlessly to and from a table of contents that's linked to the work in progress.

So if you have a resistance to outlining (and you're not alone), consider these reasons for outlining long documents in Word:

You're more likely to meet your goals. If your job involves writing grant proposals, producing product evaluations, writing annual reports, or composing print publications, you know that your document must reach a particular goal. You need to know where you're going, why you're going there, and the people you're trying to take with you. When you first type the document headings in Word, you're defining the steps that will take you to the goal of your publication. Your headings reflect the major categories of information your audience will want to know. As you create the outline, you can make sure you're covering all the topics that you need to reach your result.
You can create an organized, thoughtful document. Your outline will list not only the large categories but also smaller subtopics within each category. The multi-level capabilities Word outlines offer (up to nine levels) enable you to organize your thoughts down to the smallest detail.
The headings remind you where you're going. Once you have an outline that you're happy with, you're free to write the document as the muse strikes. If you're a stream-of-consciousness writer, you can simply go with the flow and let the words fly—in the appropriate sections, of course. (Actually, you can always move the sections later if you choose.) If you're more of a left-brain, analytical writer, you can craft your sentences within the structured topics, making sure you've got the requisite topic sentence, supporting sentences, and closing or transition sentence.
You can easily reorganize your document later. Word gives you the means to move parts of your document easily, even after your long document is filled with text: you can collapse topics to their headings and move them around as you like. And of course, Undo always reverses your action if you later decide it was a bad move.
You can expand and collapse topics. The expand and collapse features of Word's outline enable you to change what you're viewing in the document. A fully expanded outline will show everything entered thus far—so all the text you've written, subheadings you've added, and notes you've inserted will be visible in a fully expanded outline view. If you want to limit the display to only headings and subheadings, you can collapse the outline to show only those items. This enables you to check to make sure that your organization is logical, that you've covered everything you want to cover, and that you have your topics in the right order.
You can divide long documents and make assignments to get documents done faster. Word's Master Document feature enables you to divide long documents into smaller chunks that you can then assign to other writers. When you pull the document back together, all the pieces can be merged into one coherent whole. Using the outlining feature enables you to see at a glance the most logical places for divisions.
You can see what doesn't fit. Outlining also gives you a way to see what doesn't work in your document. If there's a topic that really needs to be a separate document, or a heading that is begging for a rewrite, it will stand out. Of course, you can edit, move, and enter text in Outline view, so making those changes is a simple matter.
You can easily change heading levels. Word's outlining feature comes with its own toolbar, giving you the means to promote or demote headings and text. If you want to change a level 1 heading to a level 2 heading, for example, you can do that with the click of a button. This also works for text you want to raise to a heading or headings you want to drop to body text.
You can work seamlessly with the table of contents (TOC). If you've created a TOC for your document, you can update it on the fly and move directly to it to make changes, if needed. This saves you the hassle—and potential error—of creating a document with a separate TOC that might not be updated when the document is.
You can print your outline for handouts, reviews, or talking points. Word gives you the option of printing only the outline of your document, which is a nice feature when you want to show others key points in a document or presentation but don't want them reading along word for word. Whether you do this in the review stage, as part of a collaborative effort, or to condense your finished document to a printable outline, you can display and print only the headings you want your readers to see.

Cross-Reference
For more about creating and working with Master Documents, see Chapter 20, "Creating and Controlling Master Documents."

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