Thinkabara

📝 Microsoft Word for Beginners · Lesson 4 of 9

Headings and styles

Google Classroom

Heading 1 and Heading 2, the Navigation Pane and updating a style.

Why big and bold is not enough

A heading you formatted by hand looks like a heading, but Word does not know it is one. When you use the “Heading 1” style, Word understands the structure of your document: you can jump between sections, build an automatic table of contents, and change every heading at once.

How to apply a style

  1. Click in the heading line
  2. On the Home tab, in the Styles group, click “Heading 1” for a section and “Heading 2” for a sub-section
  3. For normal text use the “Normal” style

The Navigation Pane

On the View tab, check “Navigation Pane” (or press Ctrl+F). A list of all your headings appears on the side. Click a heading to jump to it, and drag a heading to move its whole section.

Change once, update everywhere

Want every heading to be blue? Format one heading, right-click “Heading 1” in the Styles gallery and choose “Update Heading 1 to Match Selection”. All the headings in the document change together.

Tip

💡 Using styles from day one saves hours on long papers.

✏️ Practice: your turn

  1. Write a document with three sections: “Introduction”, “Body” and “Conclusion”
  2. Give each one the Heading 1 style, and add one sub-heading with Heading 2
  3. Open the Navigation Pane and jump between sections
  4. Change the color of one heading and update the style so all headings change

✏️ No Word on this computer? Practice in our free online document editor

🧠 Quick quiz

Answer all 4 questions correctly to mark this lesson as done.

1. What is the advantage of the “Heading 1” style over making text big and bold by hand?
2. Which style fits a sub-section?
3. Where do you turn on the Navigation Pane?
4. You want to change every heading at once. What do you do?

0 of 4 correct

All lessons in Microsoft Word for Beginners

  1. ✍️ 1. Your first documentOpen a document, type, save and undo a mistake
  2. 🎨 2. Formatting textFont, size, bold, color and the Format Painter
  3. 📐 3. Paragraphs, alignment and listsAlignment, bullets, numbering, indents and line spacing
  4. 🏷️ 4. Headings and stylesHeading 1 and Heading 2, the Navigation Pane and updating a style
  5. ▦ 5. TablesInsert a table, add rows and columns, design and merge cells
  6. 🖼️ 6. Pictures and shapesInsert a picture, resize it, wrap text and add alt text
  7. 📄 7. A neat pageMargins, orientation, page breaks, headers and page numbers
  8. 🎓 8. A paper ready to hand inTitle page, table of contents, footnotes, spell check and PDF
  9. ⚡ 9. Time-saving tricksFind and replace, paste without formatting, templates and sharing