Applies To
Word for the web

This is a subscriber-only feature This feature is available only to Microsoft 365 Subscribers for Windows desktop clients.

You can now navigate your documents more easily in Word using automatic heading detection. Word adds text that you marked with built-in heading styles to navigation, and now also detects headings automatically even if you didn’t use heading styles.

To open the Navigation pane, go to View > Navigation. In the Navigation pane, you’ll see automatically detected headings listed, along with headings marked with built-in Heading styles.

Automatic navigation shown

Why is Word automatically detecting headings?

You can use built-in Heading styles to explicitly mark headings in documents, and these headings automatically show in the Navigation pane. Sometimes however, you’d rather style your headings using bold, italic, underline, larger font size, or a different font color (without dealing with built-in styles). When you do, Word automatically tries to detect those headings and adds them to the navigation pane for easier navigation and document overview.

How do I use Word built-in heading styles?

Put cursor over text that you want as a heading, go to Home, and select a Heading style matching the needed heading level from the Styles drop-down.

Selecting a heading style

How do I turn off automatically detected headings?

Go to View > Navigation to open Navigation pane. Select the toggle at the bottom to hide automatically detected headings. Only headings marked with built-in Heading styles will remain.

Screenshot with automatic headings turned off

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