How to Maintain the Outline Format in MS Word
Microsoft Word can automate the creation of an outline in your document; when the program sees an outlining pattern in your document (for example, beginning one line with “I.” and the next line with a tab indent and “A.”), it automatically formats that text and all following text into an outline. However, deleting text, inserting text and changing multilevel list styles can cause irregularities in the outline format. (Multi-level list is Word’s term for an outline, to distinguish it from the Outline View, which shows the overall structure of documents which are not necessarily outlines.) These instructions are based on Word 2007.
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Instructions
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Open a new Word document in Word 2007.
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Begin typing an outline using your preferred format, and, after the first or second line, Word will recognize your outline and automatically format it. You may also begin by selecting a multilevel list style from the Paragraph group on the “Home” tab. The upper left corner of the paragraph group has three connected list icons: bulleted list, numbered list, and multilevel list. Click the multilevel list icon and select from the available list styles.
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To increase or decrease an indent, and therefore the level of the list heading, press “Tab” or “Shift” and “Tab,” respectively.
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To change back to normal formatting quickly at the end of an outline, press “Enter” at the end of the text as many times as it takes to get the cursor to resume its normal formatting position. If you didn’t mean to switch out of the multilevel list, press “Backspace” and then “Enter” to resume outlining.
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If you insert a picture, table or text between sections of an outline in which you want to retain the same formatting and numbering sequence, right click on the level number at the beginning of the second section and select “Continue Numbering” from the menu that appears.
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Tips & Warnings
If you place the text cursor at the beginning of a line of text in a multilevel list, and press the “Backspace” key, the text may change out of multilevel list format. To correct this, click “Undo.” If you notice the error later, place the cursor at the beginning of the text and press “Backspace” until the text moves onto the previous line of outlined text, then press “Enter.”
Sometimes, on the other hand, a line of text loses its multilevel list formatting when you move the following line onto that line. To solve this problem, select some of the outlined text and use the Format Painter tool (in the Clipboard group on the “Home” tab) to paint the format onto the unformatted text.
