You’ve added all of your Headings with Heading Styles, but do they do anything other than look good? Definitely! They let you use Word’s powerful organizational tools – Navigation and Table of Contents.
Navigation
It’s hard to move between sections when you are working on a long document. You can use your Heading styles to move between sections with Navigation”
- Go to your View tab.
- Then click “Navigation Pane.”
This opens up a pane on the left of your document that lets you move around. If you see pages, you can switch to your Headings by clicking the three dots (list icon). Now when you click a Heading, you’ll go right to that section.
Are you using Word for Windows? You can also move entire sections using drag and drop!
Table of Contents
With Heading Styles, you can add a Table of Contents with just a few clicks.
- Make sure hidden characters are turned off (the Paragraph mark in your Home Tab)
- Go to top of your Tables section (the part that uses Roman numbers)
- Go to the Reference tab
- Click the arrow next to Table of Conents (on the left part of the ribbon)
- Choose “custom” (we won’t use the default options)

- Set the number of levels you want to use for your Table of Contents. The default level is three, but if that makes your Table too long, you may choose to set it to 2.
- You can Modify the font or other attributes. Different parts of the Table of Contents have their own styles, including each heading level.
- When you click “OK,” Word will add your Table of Contents!
The result will look something like this:
Your Table of Contents can be updated at any time. If you reordered your arguments, added a new section, or removed something, you’ll want to update your TOC. Right-click and select ”update field,” then “update everything”.