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Headings do not appear in Navigation Pane

Anonymous
2010-10-04T12:28:57+00:00

I am editing a long document in Word 2010.

My problem is that new headings I have entered are not appearing in the Navigation Pane. Some old headings continue to appear, but as I have deleted some headings to replace them with new arrangements of text, the new headings that I create are not appearing in the Navigation pane.

It may matter to the cause of the problem that I have cut and paste large sections of text numerous times as part of the process of combining multiple chapters into a single manuscript. It might also have something to do with the problem that the new headings that I am creating have been imported from another template--they are not revised versions of the older headings but new styles taken from elsewhere.

I haven't been able to find anything that addresses this problem

Thank you for any help.

Peter

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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    Anonymous
    2013-06-19T22:19:22+00:00

    To have a header style show up in the navigation pane, you need to make sure that the style is marked as "Outline Level 1." This is because the navigation pane uses the outline levels to mark content.

    In Word 2010:

    1. Open up the "Styles" menu so that it on the right side of your window.
    2. Find the heading style that you are using for your headers and right click on it to open up the options menu.  Then select "Modify."  This opens a "Modify Style" menu box.
    3. Click on the "Format" button in the lower left corner.
    4. Select "Paragraph."
    5. In the "Outline level" selection list, make sure that "Level 1" is selected. (Or whichever level you want this header to be. If the selection box says "Body Text," then nothing will appear in the Navigation Pane.)
    6. Select "OK"

    You should now see the headers of this style in the selection pane.  Any subheads based off of this header should now also be showing up in the correct nesting configuration.

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  1. Stefan Blom 338.9K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2015-06-02T22:45:54+00:00

    It is a known limitation in Word that headings inside table cells won't appear in the Navigation pane. For what it's worth, the same thing applies to the predecessor of the Navigation pane, the so-called Document Map, in older versions of Word.

    As you have noticed, Word properly adds headings inside a table to the TOC, fortunately.

    500+ people found this answer helpful.
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  1. Anonymous
    2010-10-05T08:48:04+00:00

    Make sure that the Headings being imported are identical to those in the document by reapplying the Heading Style after inserting into the document. You can speed this up by assigning keyboard shortcuts to the Heading Styles.

    I’ve assigned Alt+1 to Heading Style 1, Alt+2 to heading Style 2, etc. Easy to remember and very easy to apply.

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  1. Anonymous
    2013-01-29T23:24:58+00:00

    I've just been looking at a very similar problem with Word2012... except none of the 'heading' styles defined within a document template I was provided were displaying within the Navigation section...

    After some investigation, I found that the heading styles had been altered so that the 'Style based on' property pointed back to the 'Normal' style.

    (To see the style settings, right-click the style in the Home ribbon, then select 'Modify' - the 'Style based on' is the third property from the top.)

    Once I'd changed 'Style based on' to point back to 'Heading 1' (and OK'd the changes) the headings started to appear in the Navigation pane...

    I had to make further modifications to the 'bespoke' heading styles as a number of the properties (e.g. bold, italic etc) had been changed by my altering the 'Style based on' setting...

    I also had to repeat the same task on all the heading styles within the template...

    Probably a bit late... but I hope this helps other people with a similar problem...

    Cheers

    I

    20+ people found this answer helpful.
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  2. Anonymous
    2012-08-10T02:45:01+00:00

    If the headings are in a table, fuggetaboutit. For some strange reason, headers within tables are not picked up and displayed by the Navigation pane.

    20+ people found this answer helpful.
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