Choosing the Way You Want Your Outline Displayed

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Working in Word's Outline view enables you to customize the display so you see only the heading levels you want to work with. For example, you might want to see only the first-level heads in your outline so that you can check to make sure all your most important topics are covered. Or perhaps you want to see every level, to check the completeness of the subtopics. You can easily move back and forth between various outline displays by using the buttons on the Outlining toolbar.

Displaying Different Levels of Text

You can easily control how much of the outline you want to see. If you want to limit the display of your outline to only Heading 2 levels, for example, you click the Show Level down arrow to display the list of levels. Click Show Level 2 to display every level down to and including level 2 (see Figure 11-5.)

Inside Out

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Being able to collapse the outline display to headings only gives you a quick look at the overall organization of your document. If only you could copy and paste only the headings of your outline as well. Unfortunately, when you highlight the entire outline, copy it, and paste it into another document, the whole thing—headings and subordinate text—goes along for the ride. The workaround is to create a table of contents (Chapter 26 tells you how) and then convert the TOC to regular text by pressing Ctrl+Shift+F9. Then you can copy the headings and paste them into a document.

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Dictating Your Outline

Now, with Word 2002, you can "speak" your outline into being. If you've enabled the Speech Recognition feature, created a profile, and taught Word how to recognize your speech patterns by using the Speech Recognition Training Wizard, you can dictate your outline as you would any other document. To dictate your outline, follow these steps:

1. Open a new document and click Outline view or choose View, Outline.
2. Place the insertion point where you want to begin.
3. Display the Language bar, if necessary (double-click the EN symbol to the left of the clock on the Windows taskbar).
4. Make sure your microphone is connected and turned on and click Microphone on the Language bar.
5. Click Dictation. Word begins "listening" to your speech.
6. Slowly and clearly speak your first heading. After a brief delay, Word enters the words at the insertion point.

The first few times you use Word 2002's new Dictation feature, don't expect miracles. It's a long process of training the program to learn to recognize your words, the way you say them. Using the training wizard and creating your own profile help, but it's a continual process. It's fun, and hopefully worth the effort, but a process nonetheless.

One word of caution, however: If you forget to turn your microphone off and you mutter to yourself as you work, you can have odd words appear in your paragraphs. A laugh apparently sounds like "Lincoln" to Word, and the phrase "You talkin' to me?" was interpreted as "Utah in the." So be forewarned: remember to turn your microphone off when you're no longer using dictation. Somebody's listening to every word you say.

For more about setting up and learning to use Word 2002's speech features, see Chapter 39, "Putting Speech and Handwriting Recognition Features to Work."

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Note

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You have other methods of changing displayed heading levels: You can click the Expand or Collapse button on the Outlining toolbar, or you can double-click the Expand button to the right of a heading to display subordinate items.

Showing the First Line of Text

When you get the to the point in your outline work where you're ready to take a look at the paragraph text you've entered, you can have Word display only the first line of text so that you can see what the content of the paragraph is without displaying the entire paragraph. Why might you want to display only the first line of text?

Figure 11-5. Control the levels displayed in Outline view by choosing what you
want to see in the Show Level drop-down list.

• You might want to check the order in which you discuss topics.
• You're considering whether to move text to a different part of the document.
• You're reviewing the primary points you've covered under subheadings.

To display only the first line of text for the paragraphs in your document, click the Show First Line Only button on the Outlining toolbar. The display changes to show the first text lines, as Figure 11-6 shows. To redisplay full paragraphs, click the button a second time.

Figure 11-6. Displaying only the first line of text allows you to see the general subject of your text so that you can make informed choices about reordering topics.

Removing and Redisplaying Formatting

Another quick display change you might want to try: suppressing the display of formatting in your outline. As you know, when you change to Outline view, the headings are shown with whatever character formatting they're assigned in the other Word views. Heading 1, by default, shows Arial 18 Point type, for example. When you're working in the outline, however, you might find the formatting differences distracting while you consider the content and organization of your topics.

To hide the formatting assigned to heading levels in your outline, click the Show Formatting button on the Outlining toolbar. This button actually functions as a toggle, meaning that the first click hides the formatting and the second redisplays it. Figure 11-7, shows you what a simple outline looks like when all formatting has been suppressed.