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Microsoft Word Outlines
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Posted by Gary Carson
Jun 19, 2009 at 01:56 PM
Just wondering if the outlining capabilities of Word had changed much in Word 2007. I’m currently using 2003.
Posted by Gary Carson
Jun 20, 2009 at 12:30 AM
Hello,
Guess I should expand on this cryptic question a little bit.
I was asking about Word’s outline feature because I’ve been thinking about starting to use it to brainstorm and develop articles and books. I’ve got Word 2003 right now and was wondering if the outline view had improved or changed in any significant way in Word 2007. If so, I guess it would be worthwhile to upgrade to 2007, but at the moment I can’t see any point in spending the money.
I’ve been looking for a good integrated outliner/word processor for a long time, but never thought about just using Word itself. For the past several years I’ve been using NoteMap, which works pretty well for my purposes. I’ll print the outlines out and use them for reference while I’m writing the piece. I’ve tried exporting NoteMap outlines directly into Word, but even though the export process works OK, the results are pretty messy and it takes a while to clean up all the various headings and bullets and so on in the Word document. Also, my outlines usually include a lot of research notes and stuff that I don’t want showing up in the document.
I’ve also tried using two-pane outliners like Whizfolders and OneNote to develop my stuff, but their interfaces are too cluttered for me to use a writing tool and I don’t really like using them as word processors. Personally, I like using a full-blown, full-screen word processor with no distractions. I’m currently using OneNote 2007 as an archive for all of the research notes and other information I want to keep long-term, but I never really use it as an outliner. For that, I like basic one-pane outliners like NoteMap (or the Word outliner).
Anyway, has anyone used Word’s outline view before? Any difference between the 2003 and 2007 outline views?
WHile I’m at it, I’ve got another question for any writers out there who use outliners in their daily work:
I like the idea of an integrated outliner/word processor where you can create an outline which also contains the body text of whatever you’re working on. Being able to work in an outline and then switch directly to “manuscript view” is like a holy grail for me, but so far I haven’t really found anything that works any better than Word (haven’t tried WordPerfect or the other word processors). THe problem is that I don’t want everything in the outline to appear in the document. Ideally, I’d like to be able to specify what parts of the outline go into the manuscript itself (for instance, chapter and scene headings with brief descriptions of what’s supposed to happen MINUS all the research notes and other stuff).
I guess what I’m getting at here is an integrated outliner/word processor where you can specify that only certain levels in the outline will be transferred to the word processor when you switch to normal or print view. That way, you could create a massive outline with all sorts of stuff, but when you switched to the word processor, you’d only get, say, the chapter headings and body text.
Does such a thing even exist? I think I know the answer, but I thought I’d ask anyway.
THanks in advance…
Posted by Hugh
Jun 20, 2009 at 11:52 AM
Gary
You’re probably aware of this from previous threads, and anyway it may be no help if you’re limited to Windows - but Scrivener on the Mac will probably do 75 to 85 per cent or more of what you want. As an outliner it lacks features that specialist applications have, and you’d probably want to export its output to a word processor for final polishing - but in Scrivener you can segregate your research from your writing as you want, add notes in meta-data panes, write in full-screen and select which parts or levels of your structure you want to include in the final product.
Additional advantages over Word are its saving and back-up routines. I started searching for alternatives to Word when I began to experience instability in its handling of long-form writing, and lost work. It didn’t seem to be designed for books. That was several years ago; the problems may have been corrected in the latest versions, but it would still be a concern for me if I had to use Word to try to write long articles or books now.
H
Posted by moritz
Jun 20, 2009 at 05:33 PM
There are several features in Word 2007/2010 that I am using that apply to outlines and conditional text:
1. search and replace (works in Word 2000 or better)
why is that relevant? well, you can search by style and/or attribute and e.g. replace with nothing.
Example: duplicate current document, then remove all yellow text—takes one click and can be stored as a macro on the quick access toolbar.
Assumption that you use formatting or markup to designate categories of content to keep or dispose.
Bonus tip: consider linked styles, i.e. pick an attribute that will be used to search and replace and incorporate that into a high-level, “category” style. Derive other styles in the same category from that to ensure consistent “tagging”.
2. style sets (new in Word 2007)
with one click, you can replace all styles at once (even with live preview).
This is tremendously valuable when you (ab)use style in “authoring mode” to highlight categories and status of text elements.
BTW using OmniOutliner on the Mac, I am also heavily using different colors to allow for easier navigation of the outline and add visual cues beyond indentation and font sizes.
3. draft mode (Word 2000 or better, to be found in the “advanced settings” dialog)
this is a nice alternative to outline and print preview mode. In the spirit of a simplistic (creative) writing environment, you can use this without actually affecting the formatting of the underlying text.
My favorite tweaks:
- use a different font (e.g. Arial 14 if you’re old enough to appreciate slightly larger fonts)
- wrap text at window border (allows you to optimize your field of vision)
- set style area pane width to 1”—what this does is to display the name of the paragraph style to the left
4. “boxed in” paragraphs, frames applied via paragraph style (Word 2000 or better)
this allows you to use margin notes that can be discarded (technique 1) and/or with one click reformatted as regular paragraphs (technique 2).
The trick is to apply frames through paragraph styles (drawing them from hand is much too cumbersome if you have hundreds of margin notes)
How to: create a new style, select Format - Frame, chose fixed width (e.g. 2”) change horizontal position relative to page (try default: 0”).
Almost certainly you will also want to tweak you other styles (e.g. if margin notes are 2” and horizontal position is 0.2” it might make sense to change page margins to 2.5” to give your text some room to breathe).
5. sometimes useful: turn on line numbering (to be found under page setup). Great navigation aid if you’re jumping between places while editing longer documents. One click in Word 2007/2010
6. capture “to dos” and tasks, either by inserting tasks (I have put that command in my quick access bar in Word 2007) or by using “track changes” and working with different reviewer names (effectively another variation of conditional text if you bulk accept/reject changes by reviewer—frequently I keep that stuff around as long as the document is actively being worked on. This allows me to pick up on alternative pieces if I ever get stuck in the mainstream “trunk” of my document and have to go for plan B.).
I hope that some of these ideas are useful for you. I love to work in Word because it has a great grammar checker, allows me to capture ideas (draft and final) using SmartArt graphics (Word 2007 or better) and let’s me build different views to support different activities during the stages of the authoring process. + versioning support, SharePoint support, ... and decent compatibility with the Mac version (although I prefer the authoring experience in Word 2007 over 2008).
Moritz
Posted by Gary Carson
Jun 21, 2009 at 01:40 PM
Moritz,
Fantastic ideas. Among other things, it never occurred to me that I could simply tag the entries in the outline I didn’t want to save and get rid of them with Find and Replace. I’ll check out these other tools as well. Never looked at Draft Mode before. Thanks for all the help.