Extra entries in the document map

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ken Goldman
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Ken Goldman

Word 2002 on Windows XP

I'd like the document map to show only "Heading 1,2,3", like what
appears in the table of contents. However, I see lots of other entries,
almost any bold sentances, short lines, etc.

Does the document map work? Is there a way to turn off everyhting
except what appears in the table of contents?
 
Ken Goldman said:
Word 2002 on Windows XP

I'd like the document map to show only "Heading 1,2,3", like what appears
in the table of contents. However, I see lots of other entries, almost
any bold sentances, short lines, etc.

Does the document map work? Is there a way to turn off everyhting except
what appears in the table of contents?
Click to expand...


Hi Ken,

Document Map often autoformats your document, and assigns outline levels to
paragraphs that look like headings.

See Daiya Mitchell's article for details:
http://word.mvps.org/FAQS/General/DocumentMap.htm

The article has a macro to fix the damage.
I rarely see Word2003 mess with the outline levels if there are headings
already. Maybe it's been made less aggressive.
And maybe, if you haven't done so already, installing the latest updates for
Word2002 might help.

That's just a guess though. If you want to use Document Map (which is a
handy tool) I don't know of any way to make sure the autoformatting does not
happen.

Regards,
Klaus
 
For DocMap to work and display correctly, your document needs to be
formatted correctly using styles throughout without any direct formatting.
What you have to be extra careful about is that DocMap is actually an
AutoFormat feature (thought this is far from obvious). If a document is
nearly all normal style with direct formatting applied here and there, when
you activate DocMap, it will go through the document AutoFormat it the way
it think you intended. So if you have emboldened a short sentence using
direct formatting, DocMap sees it as a heading and therefore applies a
Heading Style to it. This may be why you are seeing the errant headings
listed in the DocMap.

If you right-click on the DocMap, it should pop up a dialog to let you
select what levels you want to display, but as said above, your document
needs to be accurately formatted.
 
We just got a new data point. The same document, shared among many
users in many companies, has a good "Document Map" for some users
(just the headings) and a bad document map for others (many extra entries).

It doesn't seem to be correlated to the version of Word.

So we suspect that it's not the document itself but some general
configuration of Word that is incorrect for some users.

So, is there some configuration, template, master document, etc., that
could be messing up the Document Map?
 
Yes. If you right-click on the DocMap window, there's loads of choices about
which levels are displayed.
 
I see that menu. But it just allows us to specifiy the heading level.

The problem is that Word includes many non-heading entries in the
document map. There are many large, bold text, single lines in the text
that get placed in the document map. Word interprets them as headings
for some users and not for others.

So there must be some configuration that says either "be clever and try
to figure out useful things to put in the document map" and "don't be so
smart, just put the numbered headings that are in the table of contents
in the document map."

The table of contents is fine.
 
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