Microsoft Word Outlines

Posted by Lucas
Jan 21, 2010 at 02:41 PM

@Edwin: You wrote:

>In the upcoming Word 2010 the outlining will be enhanced a lot: better
>looking, drag and drop the headings in the navigation pane to restructure the
>document, and so on.

Could you elaborate on the “and so on” part? I briefly tried out the current beta of Word 2010, but I didn’t notice any new outlining features beyond what you mention here.

As for the limit of 9 levels, here is what someone who appears to represent Microsoft wrote in response to a request to remove the limit in Word 2010.

“As to the ability to nest list beyond the current nine level limit, we’re always interested in understanding more about this scenario. In general, the examples seen have actually had fewer than nine nested levels but more than nine interwoven types of lists (for example, a bulleted and a numbered list at the same indent being two types of lists at the same level). If you can share more about what you’re trying to accomplish that will help us greatly when we look at extending or current design.”

http://blogs.msdn.com/microsoft_office_word/archive/2009/11/18/word-2010-beta-is-available.aspx

@moritz: In response to your question about scenarios requiring more than nine levels, here’s the sort of thing that frequently happens to me as a graduate student in anthropology: I have a paper to write, and having already done most of the needed research as well as having written a bunch of notes, I open up Microsoft Word to do some initial writing. (I especially like Word for the comments feature, which I use to record my own thoughts about what I’ve written, to record alternate words/phrases, etc.) Before long, I find that I need to clarify my theoretical argument, so I switch into Outline View to do some brainstorming. My goal at this point isn’t to map out the sections of my paper, but rather to sort out the threads of my argument. (Usually I will eventually find that I have to abandon many of the threads and stick to a narrower focus.) In this process, I could quickly end up using a dozen outline levels (if you want actual examples of the contents of an outline, I could provide that, but I can’t imagine it would be especially relevant). But let’s say I limit my brainstorming to just nine outline levels. Then, the next day, I change my perspective and do some new brainstorming. So I collapse yesterday’s outline completely and indent it one level under a new heading “Yesterday’s Brainstorming.” Later, I want to check something from the original brainstorming session, so I double click on “Yesterday’s Brainstorming.” But now I find that there is no distinction between levels 8 and 9 of my original outline, because when I indented the whole outline under a new heading, the original level 9 remained at level 9, whereas the original level 8 advanced to level 9. Thus, the structure of my outline becomes corrupted.

Well, hope that wasn’t too confusing!