Inconsistent ability to modify Outline Level of custom Headings

Anonymous
2017-02-27T18:09:55+00:00

I'm using Word for Mac 15.31 in MacOS Sierra 10.12.3, but this issue appears to be cross-platform, since a Word-for-PC user has experienced it as well (see end of this post):

Here's what should be the procedure for modifying the Outline Level of a custom Heading:

  1. In the Styles Pane, click on the down-triangle next to the Heading whose Outline Level you want to adjust.
  2. Then select:  Modify Style –>  Format –> Paragraph –> Indents and Spacing –> Outline Level.

However, usually the Outline Levels are grayed-out and thus not changeable (for both built-in Headings and custom Headings).  The only procedure I've uncovered that consistently allows you to change the Outline Level for a custom Heading (this doesn't work for built-in Headings) is the following workaround.  Suppose you want to change the Outline Level of "Custom Heading 1":

  1. Highlight an existing Heading, whose style is "Custom Heading 1",  in the document.
  2. Go into the document's Paragraph dialog (as opposed to the Heading's Paragaph dialog), and change the Heading's Outline Level there.  
  3. Go back to the Styles Pane, click on the reverse triangle for Custom Heading 1, and then select  "Update to Match Selection".  

This roundabout method is obviously unnecessarily complicated and laborious — there's no good reason you shouldn't be able to do this directly, in the Styles Pane, with Modify Style –>  Format –> Paragraph –> Indents and Spacing –> Outline Level.  After all, why does Word offer "Outline Level" as an option under Modify Style, only to leave that option (usually) disabled?  

[Note that all my custom Headings were created based on styles of built-in Headings.]

Further, as I mentioned above, when it comes to built-in Headings, even this procedure doesn't work.

But here's the additional puzzle:  One's inability to directly modify the Outline Level of custom Headings (using Modify Style) is not consistent.  For instance, suppose you click some body text, and then change that text to a custom Heading style.  Then, usually, if you try  Modify Style –>  Format –> Paragraph –> Indents and Spacing –> Outline Level, you'll find that this custom Heading's Outline Level is no longer grayed out!  [I.e., you just have to first change some text to that Heading, and then you can internally modify the Heading's Outline Level; the problem is if the text already is in that Heading style, in which case Outline Level will typically be grayed-out.] As a further oddity, if that custom Heading was based on a built-in Heading, if you go to the corresponding built-in Heading, you'll usually see its Outline Level is no longer grayed out either!  But if you do some other stuff in the document, and then return to check either the custom Heading or the built-in Heading, you will see that their Outline Level pull-downs have reverted to a grayed-out status.

An inconsistent ability to modify the Outline Levels of Headings has also been observed by Word MVP Doug Robbins, who is using Word for PC (indicating this issue is cross-platform).  He found that, for built-in Headings, sometimes Outline Level is grayed out, and sometimes it's not. Here's an excerpt from one of Doug Robbin's posts at https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice\_word-mso\_mac/three-issues-with-navigation-pane/9933f8eb-d25b-4c42-a743-623815949d60 :

For the Built-in Heading # styles, it is not possible to modify the level. (checking again, I find that it is possible.  I do not know why the Outline level: drop down was disabled when I took the screen shot.)

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Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 323.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
2017-03-02T07:39:03+00:00

Modify Heading 3 first, then before doing anything else, access the Modify Style dialog for Heading 3 and change the Style Based on from "Heading 2"

To (no style) - it's at the top of the list.

If you do not do that, when you subsequently modify the Heading 2 style, Heading 3 will inherit the modification because it is based on Heading 2

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  1. Anonymous
    2017-03-05T21:00:55+00:00

    James, thanks for confirming that Word's help documentation doesn't have any info. about that built-in function.  Though note that I did understand Stefan's answer -- my follow-up to him was  purely due to my curiosity about the comprehensiveness of Word's help documentation, motivated by the apparent absence of info. about "Automatically Update" from said documentation.  I've just started a separate thread to address this issue (the limitations of Word's help documentation): 

    https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice\_word-mso\_mac/limitations-of-words-help-documentation/021dfc32-1f18-404e-b190-10dd52d185fe?tm=1488749867757

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-03-05T20:52:56+00:00

    Hi Theorist9,

    I've searched around but I can't find an official article describing this. I will try my best to explain to you how this option works.

    If we tick the "Automatically Update" option and we change the heading formatting of one paragraph using that style, the change also applies to the style itself. For example, we change the color of a heading using Heading 3 to red, the color of Heading 3 itself will also be changed to red.

    If we untick this option, the change we made to a heading will not affect the style itself.

    Actually, there're two steps in this process:

    First, the selected heading in the paragraph is changed.

    Second, the change is propagated to all other paragraphs of the same style. When we press Ctrl+Z, we can undo step 2 (the propagation), without undoing the change to the selected paragraph. This is how we can change the heading without affecting the Heading style when "Automatically Update" option is selected.

    Anyway, if you don't want the change in the heading in a paragraph to affect the style itself, you can untick the option.

    Regards,

    James

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-03-05T18:27:33+00:00

    "Automatically update" incorporates direct formatting into the paragraph style, which means that applying (say) bold to a paragraph will add the bold formatting to the style.

    The option may be useful for the TOC styles, but you usually don't want it for other styles.

    Thanks Stefan.  I had tried searching Word's help for "Automatically Update",  and Word said it found 137 hits.  I looked through all of them (though in fact, when I got to the end, there were only 108, not 137), and (unless I missed it), not a single one told me what the "Automatically Update" function did.  Does Word's help menu really not contain info. on one of its standard built-in functions and, if so, can you recommend better documentation?  [Let me know if you want to me to create a separate thread for this; I couldn't find any existing threads that addressed limitations in Word's help menu.]  UPDATE:

    I just started a separate thread to address this issue (the limitations of Word's help documentation): 

    https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice\_word-mso\_mac/limitations-of-words-help-documentation/021dfc32-1f18-404e-b190-10dd52d185fe?tm=1488749867757

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  4. Anonymous
    2017-03-05T17:13:15+00:00

    Hi Theorist9,

    Based on my understanding, I’d like to answer your questions as below:

    1. Normal means a style which name is Normal. It’s the same option as Heading 1, Heading 2 and so on. Doug means choose No style to let specific heading stop inheriting from another style. If here, you choose Normal, the specific heading will follow the style of Normal.
    2. Selecting Style based on one style doesn’t mean that headings will have the same spacing. You may check some existing styles, their headings may be based on the same style, but details like spacing may be different. We can modify them according to our requirements.
    3. For heading 1, if you select Style based on Title, it will use the title’s style. If you choose Style based on no style, it will use a custom style rather than the title's style.

    Best regards,

    Tim

    Hi Tim:

    #1:  I'm afraid this doesn't answer my question.  I.e., if I'm trying to exactly map Heading 1's style onto Heading 2, and Heading 1's style is based on "Normal", then to get an exact mapping, shouldn't my final step be to select  "Style Based On -->Normal" rather than  "Style Based On -->no style"?  

    What is think is going on is that there's something qualitatively different about selecting  "Style Based On -->Normal" rather than, say  "Style Based On -->Heading 1".  Specifically, suppose the font sizes of Heading 1, Heading 2, and Normal are 22, 18, and 12, respectively.  If, to Heading 2, I do "Style Based On -->Heading 1", Heading 2's font changes to 22 (as expected).  But if I instead do "Style Based On -->Normal", Heading 2's font size usually doesn't change to 12 (the font size of Normal); in fact, it usually doesn't change at all!  Given this, what does "Style Based On -->Normal" actually do?  These two screenshots illustrate my conundrum:

    ***************************************************************************************

    #2:  I think you misunderstand what I did.  E.g., consider when I mapped Heading 1's style onto Heading 2.  I didn't do this by going into Heading 2's Modify Style dialog and selecting "Style Based On -->Heading 1".  Rather, I did this by clicking on text formatted as Heading 1, then going to Heading 2 and selecting:  "Update to Match Selection."  [Shouldn't his preserve the spacings, since they are specified in the style of the selection?]  Then I went into Heading 2's Modify Style dialog and changed "Style Based On -->Heading 1" to  "Style Based On -->No Style."

    UPDATE:  I tried this using a fresh style template in a new document, and didn't have the issues described in the last paragraph, i.e., when I use "Update to Match Selection", the paragraph formatting (spacing, Widows/Orphans, etc.) is properly transferred.  I don't know why it's not working in my original document but, since that seems specific to it, rather than general behavior of Word, you can ignore this question (#2).   Further, I've fixed the spacing issue by manually adjusting my new Headings using Modify Style->Format->Paragraph.

    #3:  Here I think you misunderstood what I wrote.  I'm saying that when I used the procedure described in the above paragraph to map Heading x's style to Heading x+1, everything was preserved except for the line spacings.  But when I tried to map the Title's style onto Heading 1, I didn't just lose the line spacings, I also lost the orange bar that underlines the Title.  I.e., my point is that the mapping from Heading x to Heading x+1 is qualitatively different from the mapping of Title to Heading 1 (the latter is more incomplete).

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