Are you writing a Microsoft Word document that needs to have a table of contents, a title page, and some headings? What are the basics of setting up a Word document with these features?

We need to use a few Word features such as text formatting, headings, styles, sections, and tables. When you want to reveal the formatting of the text in your Word file, press Shift+F1.

Heading

Headings are just words that separate out parts of your document. An example is the word Heading just above this paragraph. It’s formatting is a larger font and a bold font. Headings are provided in levels where heading one is the top, highest and largest level.

Styles

Styles allow you to quickly update the formatting of your documents. They also allow you to easily create an updatable table of contents. You can use the built-in styles or create custom styles that for example, use your corporate colors instead of the provided ones. You text will by default be in the Normal style. You can go through your document and select (highlight) all of your major (most important) headings and go to the Home tab, and select Heading 1 under the Styles section.

Themes

Themes are beyond the scope of this article, but you should know that themes use styles. Themes are under the Design tab (menu).

Table of Contents

If you have all of your document styled with the right headings, you can easily create a table of contents. Click on the References tab (menu). In the upper left part of the screen you can click on Table of Contents. You can pick one or do a custom table of contents.

Navigation Pane

Click on the View tab (in the menu). Click on the check box for Navigation. Word’s Navigation pane opens on the left side of the screen. This will display a summary of the document headings. You can click on the names of your headings to jump around the document.

Learning with YouTube

There is a video called How to use Styles in Microsoft Word by Kevin Stratvert that covers the basics of styles in Word.