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Tag Archives: Word tips

Help – my Word Navigation Panel font has gone tiny

You’re using Microsoft Word and suddenly the font size in your Navigation Pane has gone tiny. Here’s what to do.

Funnily enough, a similar situation inspired my very first post on this blog – What to do if your comment boxes go tiny in Word. Now we have the same situation with the Navigation Pane and its text becoming very small.

What is the navigation pane?

The navigation pane (or document map) is that area to the left (usually) of your Word document which gives you the option to view the headings and layout of your document, the pages, or search results for a term you’ve looked up. It normally looks like this:

but the problem arises when, often for no reason, sometimes when you’ve got a new monitor with a higher resolution, suddenly all the text in that Navigation Pane area is in a tiny font size. How do you change that font size? The answer lies in the Styles.

How to find the Styles menu

The Styles menu is in the Home tab. You might need to widen out your Word window to find it.

Once you’ve found Styles, click on the little arrow at the bottom right.

How to see all the styles, not just some

By default, Word will show you the styles it thinks you might need. Of course the one you want is never in the list. To see All the styles and edit the one you want …

Click on “Options” at the bottom of the window.

Then change the drop downs to “Select styles to show”: All styles and “Select how list is sorted”: Alphabetical.

Then click OK.

How to change the Navigation Pane style using Document Map

The style that controls the Navigation Pane is called “Document Map”. I can only assume that it was once ONLY the document map, as that is still included in the Navigation Pane. Scroll down to find it …

… and click on the little arrow to the right-hand side.

How to modify the Document Map / Navigation Pane style

Click on “Modify” so you can change the font size of the Navigation Pane.

Now the Modify Style window will appear. Here you can see the style is set to be an odd-named font with a very small font size. Here you can just change the font and size to whatever you want:

Once you’ve changed the font, and decided whether you want to add this style to the gallery (hopefully not, as you’ll never need to change it again!) and whether you only want this change for this document or all new documents based on the same template (not so useful if you only work on documents originating with other people), press “OK”.

Does this fix always work?

You may need to close and re-open your document to see the font size in the Navigation Pane change to one you can read. And it might not work, especially if you’re working with a corrupted document that has been through a lot of versions. But it should do.

Summary

In this post we have learned what to do if your Navigation Pane font size in Word suddenly becomes tiny (or, indeed, enormous)

Please note that these tips are primarily for Word 2010 and onwards, including Microsoft Office Subscription for PC. Most of them will work for Word for Mac, although you may find some menus in different places and I can’t guarantee it. This is part of my series on how to avoid time-consuming “short cuts” and use Word in the right way to maximise your time and improve the look of your documents. Find all the short cuts here …

Do let me know if this has helped you, saved your document, etc. – and do share with the buttons at the bottom of this article.

How do I view my Navigation Pane?

How do I move text and headings using the Navigation Pane?

8 Comments

Posted by Liz Dexter on May 16, 2025 in Copyediting, Errors, Short cuts, Word

Tags: errors, Word tips

Can I print a Word document to PDF and retain the tracked changes?

24 Jul

If you want to print or save a Word document to change it into a PDF, and you have Tracked Changes showing in the Word document, will those tracked changes still show up in the PDF?

I needed to check this myself this morning, so now I’ve confirmed what happens, I thought I’d write a quick article about it, on the grounds that if I’ve had to check, someone else will need to, too (bloggers: this is a good way to inspire blog posts if you’re lacking ideas!).

So here is the definitive answer to the question Can I save a Word document as a PDF and keep the tracked changes showing.

Why save a Word document with tracked changes into a PDF?

This came about because I was discussing plagiarism with a colleague and explaining what I do if I need to confirm from a client’s supervisor that it’s OK to make as many changes as I’m making to their text. I mentioned that sometimes I will send over a copy of the work so far, and sometimes I’ll go as far as to turn the Word document into a PDF so it can’t be altered between me and the supervisor. But will the tracked changes still show up?

Proof that tracked changes still show on the PDF

So here’s my Word document, complete with tracked changes (make sure these are showing):

Just a reminder that in the newer versions of Word you can save to a PDF automatically without having to go through third-party software. Choose File – Save As then drop the file type down to choose PDF:

Then when you open it in your PDF reader (I use PDF-XChange Viewer), there are all the tracked changes!

So, if you want to preserve your tracked changes so they can’t be, um, well, changed, printing to PDF will give you an image of them you can share.

I hope you’ve found this useful – do click the Like or Share buttons or comment if I’ve helped you out!

Please note: these tips work for Microsoft Word version 2007 and upwards. They are not guaranteed or tested for Word for Mac.

How to customise your contents page in Word

27 Mar

It’s Word Tips time again and today we’re going to talk about customising your contents page.

Why do people customise their contents page?

Sometimes you have lots and lots of sub-headings in a document but you only want to show the main or main and sub-headings on the contents page, not every tiny sub-sub-heading.

In addition, you might want to change the style of your contents page or its individual font and layout. Here’s how to do it, with a worked example of changing the levels that are shown.

Reminder: how do I insert a contents page?

Here’s our document, with headings at H1, H2 and H3 level. I’ve marked these up with their heading levels already (see here for how to assign heading levels).

If we just follow the usual process for inserting a table of contents, we will create a blank page before this one, then go to the References tab and choose Table of Contents, then click on one of the automatic options that come up.

This is the result: a table of contents that includes all the headings in our original text:

How do I select which heading levels appear in my Table of Contents?

If you want to ignore all headings below level 2 (1.1, 1.2) then you need to customise the table of contents.

As before, select the References tab and the Table of Contents button. However, now click on Custom Table of Contents

This will give you this dialogue box:

There are lots of different things you can do here. For example, you can choose to show or not show the page numbers in the table of contents, and whether or not to align them. The preview panes at the top will show you the results before you click OK.

Options allows you to choose the style for the table of contents from a set of heading styles, and Modify then Modify again allows you to completely customise the appearance of the table of contents text permanently, with underlining, different fonts, etc.

At the moment, we’re concerned with eliminating the level 3 headings from the table of contents.Click on the arrows by Show levels to adjust how many levels are displayed:

And click OK. Here we have changed the number of levels to 2, and the result is this:

Even though the text still has the same headings and levels it had before, the table of contents now just includes those headings down to Level 2

This is part of my series on how to avoid time-consuming “short cuts” and use Word in the right way to maximise your time and improve the look of your documents. Find all the short cuts here … Please note that these tips are for Word 2010 and later for Microsoft. I can’t guarantee or check they will work in Mac versions of Word.

Do let me know if this has helped you – and do share with the buttons at the bottom of this article.

Track changes – how do I get rid of the text box that appears when I hover over words in a Word document?

13 Feb

How do you get rid of document tooltips? How do you stop the little text boxes appearing when you hover over deleted or added words in Word. I had a query about this in a comment and thought that it warranted some screen shots and instructions.

What’s the problem here? What do you mean by these text boxes?

When you’ve worked with Track Changes enabled in Word, as well as showing you what your editor or collaborator has deleted or inserted into the text in red and with bubbles in the margin, you also get text boxes when you hover over the change. Here’s what that looks like:

Some people get annoyed by this, so here’s how to turn it off.

How do I turn off document tooltips aka those little text boxes that show me what I’ve deleted?

This process works for Word 2010 and later versions:

Click File on the far left of the tabs and then Options:

Once in Options, choose Display:

The Display dialogue box has an option to Show document tooltips on hover. Untick this by clicking in the square, then choose OK.

Now you won’t see those boxes in the document.

However, it does NOT turn off the useful tooltips in the rest of Word – so if you hover over any of the items on the Ribbon, you will still see the usual tooltips there.

If you’re using Word 2007, click the round button in the top left corner, choose Word Options at the very bottom of the dialogue box, then as above, select Display and untick Show document tooptips on hover.

Please note: these tips work for Microsoft Word version 2007 and upwards. They are not guaranteed or tested for Word for Mac.

How do I know when Track Changes is turned on? Word 2007, 2010, 2013 and 2016

15 Feb

This article quickly explains how you know when track changes is turned on.

Do also read these articles to find out more about track changes: what Track Changes is, why we use it and where to find it, and how to customise Track Changes to suit our own preferences and learned how to work with a document that has Tracked Changes.

We turn on track changes to make sure that whoever else is using the document can see what changes (additions, deletions, moving text) we have made in the text. If you are working with an editor, they will typically turn track changes on so you can see what they have suggested. When my clients send me back amendments to a text they’re working on, I ask them to turn track changes on so I can see easily what they have done to the document.

How do I know when track changes is turned on in Word 2007 and Word 2010?

Word 2007 and Word 2010 look a bit different from later versions.

When track changes is turned on, you will see the button highlighted in orange:

This means that every change you make will be displayed in Word and other people will be able to see them if they have the correct view in their version of Word.

If the button is white, like the rest of the area, track changes it not turned on.

How do I know when track changes is turned on in Word 2013 and Word 2016?

Word 2013 and Word 2017 look different and the highlighting is more difficult to see, in my opinion.

When track changes is turned on, you will see the button highlighted in blue-grey:

This means that every change you make to the document will be displayed in Word and other people will be able to see them if they have the correct view in their version of Word.

When track changes is off, the button will be white, like the rest of the area.

If you want highlighting to be in a different colour, you will need to change the theme, and that’s for another article!

This article has taught you how to check whether you have track changes turned on in your Word document. See the links below for more track changes articles.

If you have found this article useful, please share or “like” it using the buttons below, or leave me a comment to tell me what you think. Thank you!

This is part of my series on how to avoid time-consuming “short cuts” and use Word in the right way to maximise your time and improve the look of your documents.

Please note, these hints work with versions of Microsoft Word currently in use – Word 2007, 2010, 2013 and 2016 all for PC. Mac compatible versions of Word should have similar options. Always save a copy of your document before manipulating it. I bear no responsibility for any pickles you might get yourself into!

Relevant articles on this website

Track changes 1 – why use it, where can you find it, what can you do with it?

Track changes 2 – customising Track Changes

Track changes 3 – working with a document with tracked changes

How do I accept one reviewer’s changes?

Why are my tracked changes changing colour?

How do I move text using my Navigation pane in Word? How do I reorder the headings?

31 Jan

If you have set up Headings styles in your Word document, you can use the Navigation pane to move sections around the document without having to use cut-and-paste and endless scrolling. This article tells you how.

Note that this only works if you have applied headings styles to your document, i.e. marked your headings as Heading 1, Heading 2, etc. (see information on how to do this here).

How do I access the Navigation pane?

Please see this article with screen shots if you need help viewing the Navigation pane:

Press Control-F

View tab, tick the box next to Navigation Pane Show

How do I use the Navigation pane to move text?

You can use the Navigation pane to move all of the text under one heading. If you choose a heading with sub-headings, all of the text in the sub-headed sections will also move.

First, click on the heading for the text you want to move:

You can see that you will navigate to that heading in the document itself.

Then keep left mouse button clicked down and drag the heading up or down the list of headings (it will scroll automatically if you reach the top or bottom). A black line will appear at the insertion point:

When you’ve got the heading where you want it, let go of the mouse button to drop it into position. The whole of the text under that heading (including the text under any sub-headings) will have now moved:

This article has taught you how to move text under headings using the Navigation pane in Word. I hope you’ve found this article useful. Do please add a comment or use the sharing buttons below if you have found it useful or interesting. Thank you!

Why do I need to look at the Navigation pane?

If you have a long document with lots of headings, it’s really useful to get a view, a bit like a Contents page, showing all your headings and sub-headings.

The Navigation pane also gives you a handy way to move sections of your document around without too much copy-pasting and scrolling. Watch out for instructions on that, coming soon!

Note that this only works if you have applied headings styles to your document, i.e. marked your headings as Heading 1, Heading 2, etc. (see information on how to do this here). If you haven’t applied headings styles, Word can’t know what’s a heading and what’s normal text, so won’t be able to display your headings in the Navigation pane.

How do I access the Navigation pane?

Initially, your document will look like this: just the text on a page:

There are two ways to access the Navigation pane:

1. Press the Control and F keys at the same time.

2. Go to the View tab and tick the box next to Navigation Pane Show

In both cases, if you have headings set up in your document, you will now see the Navigation pane on the left-hand side of your screen:

You can see here that you have the top-level headings and sub-headings showing in your Navigation pane.

Make sure you are in headings view by checking the tabs at the top. You should be on the left-hand one:

How do I use the Navigation pane?

You can click on any heading in the Navigation pane to move directly to that heading in the document. For example, clicking on the “All about Twitter” heading in my Navigation pane will take me to that heading:

You can also use the Navigation pane to move chunks of text around, but I’ll talk about that in another article.

How do I close the Navigation pane?

You can close the Navigation pane using the x in the top right corner of the pane, or by unticking Navigation pane show.

This article has explained what the Navigation pane is, why you might find it useful and how to use it to view your document headings.

I hope you’ve found this article useful. Do please add a comment or use the sharing buttons below if you have found it useful or interesting. Thank you!

How to combine Word documents and not lose the format

Before you combine the documents into one big document, add a Section Break at the end of each document you want to combine.

I’ve covered this in more detail in this article, but here’s a summary with a screenshot from Word 2013.

Go to the Page Layout tab
Find the Breaks section and drop it down using the little arrow
Select Section Break – Next page

Once you’ve done this to all your documents, combine them. You might find you have some extra blank pages at the end of sections: turn Paragraph Marks on (see this article for how to do that) so that you can see your Section Breaks. Carefully delete the blank pages but leave the section breaks there.

This should retain your individual formatting in each individual document that you’ve combined.

If you’ve found this article on how to combine Word documents without losing the formatting, useful, please comment or share using the buttons below. Happy document-combining!

More Control Key keyboard shortcuts Ctrl-J and more

27 Sep

I have previously written about the wonders of Control-F and how this keyboard shortcut finds text in almost everything (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, web pages, WordPress back-end, etc., etc., etc). Then I discussed other Control- or Ctrl+ keyboard shortcuts that you can use to copy and paste, embolden, italicise and underline, find, goto and replace, undo, redo and open, new, print and save. But I’ve recently had some questions about the remaining Control Key commands, so let’s round up what they do.

Why do we use keyboard shortcuts?

Keyboard shortcuts are used to save wear and tear on the wrists, to interact with a computer in other ways than just using two hands and a mouse, to save time, and, maybe, to show off your amazing computer skills.

What are the rest of the keyboard shortcuts using the Control key, then?

Ctrl-D – open the Font dialogue box using Control Key + D

Ctrl-E – centres the text in which the cursor is situated (this acts a toggle, so will un-centre centred text)

Ctrl-J – makes the text in which the cursor is situated become fully justified (again, this is a toggle, so the text will return to left justification (in a left-to-right alphabet document) if it’s already fully justified)

Ctrl-K – opens the Hyperlink dialogue box – make sure you have the text that you want to create a link for highlighted before pressing Control + k

Ctrl-L – makes the text in which the cursor in situated become left-justified (a toggle, so if it’s already only left-justified, pressing this will return the text to its full justification)

Ctrl-M – increases the indent on the left (much like the Tab key)

Ctrl-Q – removes indenting, so if you haven’t got any, it will seem this doesn’t do anything

Ctrl-R – makes the text in which the cursor is located become right-justified (a toggle, so pressing this in text that is already right-justified will change it to left-justified)

Ctrl-T – moves just the bottom indent slider across one tab at a time to create a hanging indent

Ctrl-W – closes the document, giving you the option to save

———————

Did you know ALL of these shortcuts? They’ll save you some mouse clicks and some are a lot quicker and more useful than the other methods you can use to get the same results. Which are your favourites?

How do I make my picture appear next to my comments in Word 2013 and 2016?

15 Jun

Here’s a problem: when I add comments to a Word document don’t show my picture by them although I’m signed in to my Microsoft account. This article explains how to make sure that your personal picture appears in your Word Comments (in Word 2013 and going forward to 2016 and beyond, for PC). If your picture has disappeared from your Word comments, it tells you how to get it back. If you don’t want to see your picture in Word comments, it tells you how to remove it.

I always try to be responsive to my commenters (see this post on comments for why!) and so I’m writing this post as a direct consequence of a comment I received on one of my articles about comment boxes in Word.

The basic problem is this: you can have your image appear next to your comments in Word. Because Word 2013 and beyond are designed largely to be used with an active subscription account with Microsoft, it can pull details from your Microsoft account through to the software to enhance your user experience.

Why would you want your image next to your comments?

I’m going to repeat the comment here (with many thanks to commenter and correspondent Lark Lands) so you can see what the problem is and why it’s important:

I have Word 2013 and from the time I first started using it when I click on the Review tab and insert a new comment it would appear showing my name and my Microsoft “account picture” plus the typed comment. Now the account picture has disappeared and all you see is that icon of a generic person. Because I’m a medical editor who is constantly working on files with comments from many different people the photo is actually useful because at a glance I can whiz through a 40-page document, just slowing down when I see the photo in order to see if people have responded to my comments.

So this comment writer uses the picture to scan down and find their own comments.

Please remember the golden rule of Track Changes and Comments here, however: how you choose to display your Word document comments and changes has no effect on what your client sees. So you can add your picture to your own view, but don’t expect this to carry through to your client’s or collaborator’s view of the document.

Where is the picture in my comments in Word?

In Word 2013 or 2016, you might see a picture in your comments: it will appear in this position if you have it set up to show pictures:

The arrow is pointing to the placeholder picture (if you’re not logged into your Microsoft account online) or your own picture (if you are logged in)

If you don’t have pictures enabled, your comments will look like this:

How do I add or remove my picture from Word 2013 comments?

The first thing you need to do here is to make sure that you’re logged in to your online Microsoft account. If you don’t do this, the “picture” that appears by your comment will just be a little placeholder symbol and your efforts will be wasted to an extent.

Now you need to make sure boxes are ticked (or unticked) in two places and then do one final but very important process.

1. Set up Track Changes options

First, set up your Track Changes options to show pictures.

In the Review tab, find the Track Changes area and click on the arrow in the bottom right corner:

When you’ve clicked on the arrow, this dialogue box will appear: make sure that Pictures by Comments is either ticked or unticked, depending on whether you want to see the pictures or not:

Click OK and the first part of the process is done.

2. Check your Word Options are appropriate

Now you need to go into Word Options and make sure that your picture displays whether or not you are logged in to your Microsoft account (you should be logged in when you do this)

Go into Word Options using the File tab …

… and then choosing Options

The Word Options dialogue box will appear. Make sure that Always use these values regardless of sign in to Office is NOT ticked (even though this seems counter-intuitive):

Click on OK and process 2 is complete.

3. Restart your computer (do not ignore this one)

After an amount of correspondence on this topic, my original comment poster noted that they hadn’t fully restarted their computer. It’s not enough to restart Word – you need to restart Windows.

So, restart your computer and now your picture should appear or not appear as you wish.

This article has told you what to do if your picture does not appear next to your comments in Word 2013 or you want to add or remove your picture from Word comments.

Please do click the share buttons or comment if you’ve found this article interesting and/or useful.

Tag Archives: Word tips

What is the navigation pane?

How to find the Styles menu

How to see all the styles, not just some

How to modify the Document Map / Navigation Pane style

Does this fix always work?

Summary

Related articles

Why save a Word document with tracked changes into a PDF?

Proof that tracked changes still show on the PDF

Other track changes articles on this website

Why do people customise their contents page?

Reminder: how do I insert a contents page?

How do I select which heading levels appear in my Table of Contents?

Related articles on this website

What’s the problem here? What do you mean by these text boxes?

How do I turn off document tooltips aka those little text boxes that show me what I’ve deleted?

Other track changes articles on this website

How do I know when track changes is turned on in Word 2007 and Word 2010?

How do I know when track changes is turned on in Word 2013 and Word 2016?

Relevant articles on this website

How do I access the Navigation pane?

How do I use the Navigation pane to move text?

Other useful articles on this blog

Why do I need to look at the Navigation pane?

How do I access the Navigation pane?

How do I use the Navigation pane?

How do I close the Navigation pane?

Other useful articles on this blog

How to combine Word documents and not lose the format

Other useful articles on this website

Why do we use keyboard shortcuts?

What are the rest of the keyboard shortcuts using the Control key, then?

Why would you want your image next to your comments?

Where is the picture in my comments in Word?

How do I add or remove my picture from Word 2013 comments?

1. Set up Track Changes options

2. Check your Word Options are appropriate

3. Restart your computer (do not ignore this one)

Other relevant articles on this blog

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