If you ask a group of writers about their favourite writing software, you’ll end up with tons of different answers – and clever technical people are coming up with new offerings all the time! The one thing you can almost guarantee, however, is that any mention of Microsoft Word will be met with cries of frustration and proclamations about other software being far easier to use.
But I’m a writer, and I love Word. There. I’ve said it.
I’ve tried and tested plenty of other methods too, when I’ve convinced myself the words aren’t coming because I’m stuck staring at a blank white page… Incidentally, did you know you can turn on Dark Mode in Word too? But none of these other programs have ever stuck, and Word is what I go back to time and time again. It’s also invaluable for my editing work, and makes formatting and copy-editing manuscripts much simpler!
So this series of blogs – How to use Word like a professional editor – is partly about me standing up for the much-maligned Office program, and partly about sharing my knowledge in case it helps someone else who may be struggling with it! This is the first one, but I intend to keep adding to it regularly until I’ve exhausted all my Word tips and tricks!
Now, let’s get to the good stuff…
What’s the navigation pane and how does it help?
The navigation pane is a menu you can open up as a sidebar to your Word document, showing all of the headings and subheadings it contains. So, if all of your chapter numbers and/or titles are properly tagged as headings, you’ll be able see them at a glance. You can even use it to mark sections that need revision, so you can see all of those in one place too.
Then you’ll be able to move to any of these spots with a single click. No more endless scrolling!
Where can I find it?
You can open the navigation pane by clicking on the “View” tab of the menu bar at the top of the screen, and then clicking the box next to “Navigation Pane” marked with a red tick in the image below.
When it opens up, on the left of your document, it’ll likely be empty. Your window will look something like the below (but without the glaring red arrow pointing at the navigation pane).
You’ll notice there are three tabs underneath the search bar inside the pane: Headings, Pages, and Results. The first allows you to navigate through your headings (once you’ve tagged them), the second allows you to jump to any individual page, and the third is where you’ll find the results when you Ctrl+F to find a word or phrase in your manuscript.
You might even have seen the navigation pane before when you’ve searched your document, and not realised what else you can do with it!
How do I use it?
In order to skip between your chapter titles, you’ll need to make sure they (or any other bits of text you want to be able to jump to, like section breaks or brief notes) are properly tagged as headings. The good news is that this is super easy!
Click on the “Home” tab of the menu bar at the top of the screen and find the “Styles” section in the middle. You want your chapter titles to be styled as “Heading 1”. First, select the text of your chapter number/title by dragging your cursor over it and then click on “Heading 1” in the styles section to tag it as a heading.
NOTE: You may not like the font style/size/colour currently assigned to “Heading 1”, but there’s a way to change that – and it works just as efficiently whether you do it before or after tagging all of your headings. I’ll cover how to use the Styles section in more detail in the next blog in this series, so make sure to check that out too.
When you’ve clicked “Heading 1” to tag it, the chapter title should appear in the navigation pane. Your document will now look something like this:
Now, just repeat that process for each of your chapter titles until all of them appear in the navigation pane. If you have both chapter numbers and titles, you can tag each one separately (numbers as “Heading 1” and titles as “Heading 2”) and both will show.
Tip: If you want to avoid endless scrolling between your chapter titles here, you can use Ctrl+F and search “chapter” to find each one (assuming they all contain the word). And, if you’re still working on your manuscript, you can tag each chapter title as you write it rather than doing them all at once when you finish.
When you’ve done that, the “Headings” tab of the navigation pane will look something like the image below.
In this example, you’ll notice that I’ve tagged my section breaks (***) as “Heading 2” so I can jump to those easily too. They automatically nest quite neatly under the relevant chapter heading. I’ve even tagged a couple of notes as “Heading 2” as well – those in chapter 5 and chapter 12 – so I can see at a glance where I want to make revisions.
You can easily remove these additional headings when you’ve dealt with them, either by deleting the text itself or by selecting it and clicking again on the relevant part of the “Styles” section at the top of the screen to remove the tag.
One click to take you anywhere in your manuscript
Now that your navigation pane is populated, you can simply click on any of the headings and be there in an instant. Changed your ending and want to revise a detail at the beginning? One click. Finished your research on poisons and want to add a name where you left a note for yourself in the middle of chapter 15? One click!
It really is a game-changer!
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