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Collapse and Expand Heading in your Word 2013 Document

    It’s All About Heading Styles

    This new feature is only really going to help you out if you use heading styles within your document.  If you’re saying to yourself “What’s a heading style” well it’s a long story, but the short version is that you can apply heading styles via the Ribbon’s HOME tab in the Style group.

    Heading Styles in Word 2013

    Click into a heading in your document, click one of these heading styles and bang – your heading looks like a proper heading – all big and in a different colour.  The fact that there is more than one heading style indicates that you can create a hierarchy with your headings.  Heading 1 is more important than Heading 2, Heading 2 tops a Heading 3 etc.  So not only do heading styles make your headings look pretty but they also create a structure for your document.

    Collapse a Heading

    Now this relates to the expand and collapse feature in Word 2013. If I point at a heading that has heading style applied to it (as shown below) I can see a little collapse button.

    Collapsable Headings in a Word document

    Click the collapse button and all the text and lesser headings get swallowed up into the heading you have collapsed (see below). Where’s all my work gone? Don’t worry – read on…

    Expand a Heading

    Now a small white triangle next to the heading indicates that the heading has been collapsed.  Click the triangle and it will expand the heading for you. Phew, you got your work back!

    A collapsed heading

    For long documents this is a really useful as you can collapse all headings to make the document easier to navigate.

    Collapse All Headings

    I’ve right-clicked on my heading as shown below and the menu gives me an Expand/Collapse option.  Within that submenu I get an option to collapse all headings.

    Expand and Collapse Menu

    My document now looks like this with just the main headings visible – all the remaining content collapsed up into the headings.

    All Headings Collapsed

    So now I can just expand the section of the document I want to edit or read.  This kind of functionality was always available in Outline view – but now it’s available in the Print Layout view, a lot more people are going to be making use of it.

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