Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Navigating Your Document Using Outline View.

Navigating Your Document Using Outline View

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated December 23, 2023)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003

If you use defined styles, and you have organized your document so you use the headings defined by Word, you can use the Outline view to navigate through your document. For instance, let's assume you have a large document, and you want to quickly jump to a location that you figure is about three-fourths of the way through the document. You know the heading for the text you want to find, but you can't quite remember the exact wording (therefore, you can't use the Find command). Here's how you could use Outline view to find the area:

Choose Outline from the View menu, or click the Outline view icon in the left side of the Status Bar. The screen changes and the outline toolbar is displayed.
Depending on your version of Word, either click on first-level heads on the toolbar (the tool with the number one on it) or use the Show Level drop-down list to choose Level 1 Heads. All text except first-level heads disappears.
Read through the heads to find the section you want.
Make sure the insertion point is positioned within the header text.
Choose Normal, Page Layout, or Print Layout from the View menu. Your cursor is now in the section where you wanted to be.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (28) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Navigating Your Document Using Outline View.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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