When working on a long document, especially a non-fiction one with plenty of structure, the Outline View is rather handy. It allows you to see the overall structure as well as the details you need. This view is often used when doing Developmental Editing as that is the step when considering the overall arrangement of information. For a quick and easy view of the whole document, the Navigation Pane works well, but unless you manually click in it, you’ll get the same level throughout. With Outline View, you can have everything showing only Heading 1 except the one or two sections where you are currently working.
After turning on Outline View with Ctrl-Alt-O, the first thing I do is cut back on all the clutter by limiting the display to just the top few headings. Use Alt-Shift-1 to show only the top-most heading. If you need a bit more detail, then you can use Alt-Shift-2 or 3. Much more than that and the display gets too chaotic. The next thing I do is limit the display of longer paragraphs to just the first line: Alt-Shift-L. If I don’t want to see any of the text…just the headings…I’d just hit the asterisk key on the numeric pad.
Note: Be aware that some keys work much differently in Outline View than in the other views, especially on the numeric pad.
In Outline View
Now that you’re in Outline View, you’ll probably be adjusting the headings. Move to any heading and use Alt-Shift-Up Arrow to move the entire pgph up to before the previous one. Alt-Shift-Down Arrow moves it down to after the next. Promoting a pgph to the next higher heading style is done with Alt-Shift-Left Arrow. Demoting is Alt-Shift-Right Arrow. If you want to demote all the way to ‘normal’ text, removing it from the headings, use Ctrl-Shift-N.
Expanding the headings below the one where you are by one step can be done with either Alt-Shift-Plus (on the main keyboard) or just the Plus (on the numeric pad…here’s one of the big differences on the numeric pad). Collapsing lower headings is either Alt-Shift-Minus (on main) or just the Minus (on numeric pad). We already saw that the asterisk on the numeric pad shows or hides all the text level pgphs, but the slash key over there will show or hide any character-level formatting you may have…again, allowing you to focus on the organization, rather than the content.
Here’s another key that works differently in Outline View: Tab. The keys Tab and Shift-Tab demote and promote pgphs, just as the Alt-Shift-Arrows do. If you really want to insert a tab whilst in Outline View, you’ll need to use Ctrl-Tab.
That should cover all the intricacies of using Outline View. I hope it helps you keep your ideas organized.