Change multiple heading levels

Question

I want to reorganise the my Word 2010 document and have the heading styles update accordingly.

For example, I realise that the "Insects" should really be a sub-section of "Animals" rather than its own separate chapter. And "Dogs" and its subsections really belong under "Mammals".

Is there a way to bump up (or down) the heading levels of multiple paragraphs at once?

If I just move the paragraphs and corresponding headers to the proper location, the heading levels will still be wrong; i.e. "Insects" and "Dogs" will still be Heading 1, whereas they should be Heading 2 and Heading 3, respectively. Is there a way to fix this in bulk, rather than clicking on each individual header one by one and changing its style?

<-before after->

Answer 1

From the navigation pane, drag the section to the correct place (eg, drag dogs between mammals and reptiles) and then you can select 'demote' on the dogs section. This will demote dogs and all its subsections.

Answer 2

The following article shows how to create a list style. I'm going to suppose you already did that, because i'd just plagiarize the article.

http://shaunakelly.com/word/numbering/numbering20072010.html

This will work:

• select all the paragraphs you want to change (thanks to Control-Selection)
• click the "Increase Indent" button

The paragraph numbers will automatically change. If they don't, then the list style isn't properly set.

Answer 3

Have you looked at the Outline view?

In that view, you can easily drag headings and their corresponding paragraphs around and change the level.

Answer 4

As others have suggested, use Outline view.

1. Filter the levels using the Show Level drop down
2. Select the levels you want to change
3. Use the Demote/Promote buttons

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Answer 5

Use View->navigation pane, - you can drag levels - you can increase (decrease) indent of any level independently of its sublevels, just push increase (decrease) button for this - you can increase (decrease) indent of any level with all its sublevels, for this you must use right mouse click on any level and select increase (decrease) indent in the context menu.