Chapter 9: Outlining Documents for Clarity and Structure

Whenever you’re tackling anything big, it helps to start with the end in mind. When it comes to creating long or complex documents, your outline is the foundation on which everything else is built. The outline represents the major ideas in your document and gives you a clear roadmap to follow as you’re capturing the thoughts you want to share with others. It also helps you organize your presentation into manageable pieces that others can navigate, review, and respond to.

In this chapter, you’ll learn all about the outlining capabilities of Microsoft Office Word 2007. Whether you love outlining and want to make the best use of all available tools or you’re only creating the blasted thing because your supervisor asked for it, you’ll find the tools easy to understand and use. With practice and a few tips and techniques, you might find yourself actually enjoying it.

Outlining Enhancements in Word 2007

The biggest change in Office Word 2007 is also the one that will make creating, modifying, and managing your outlines much easier. Word 2007 brings all the tools you need to outline your document together in one convenient place: the Outlining tab. To display the tools, click the View tab and click Outline in the Document Views group.

The Outline Tools group on the Outlining tab provides you with all the tools you need to create and set the various levels of your outline quickly. Just point and click the set the level of display you want to show in your outline; turn formatting on and off; and tweak the outline to your heart’s content (see Figure 9–1).

Figure 9–1: The Outlining tab on the Ribbon includes all the tools you need for working with multilevel outlines in Word 2007.