Understanding the Document Map

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated May 24, 2025)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003

As you are working with large or complex documents, it is often easy to lose your place and spend a lot of time trying to find information. Word includes a special viewing mode that can help you navigate through your document quickly and easily. This special viewing mode is called the Document Map.

Displaying the Document Map is easy—just choose Document Map from the View menu. This menu option is actually a toggle; selecting the option once turns it on, and then selecting it a second time turns it off.

You can tell when you are using the Document Map because an outline of your document appears at the left side of the screen, with the document text at the right.

Once the Document Map is displayed, you use it by clicking your mouse on one of the headings in the outline portion of the screen. When you do, the text portion is changed to display the portion of the document containing the heading on which you clicked.

You can scroll through the outline and the text areas separately. Remember, however, that clicking your mouse on the outline results in a change in the text portion of the document.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (1220) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

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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