How to Create and Customize Headings in Microsoft Word

How to Create and Customize Headings in Microsoft Word

This tutorial shows how to create headings in Microsoft Word. First, we’ll look at how to create headings using Word’s built-in styles. Then, we’ll look at how to customize Word’s built-in heading styles to your preferred font, font size, alignment, and color.

Why Are Heading Styles Important?

You can make any text in Word look like a heading by using a large font size. However, you won’t have access to several important features if you use a large font size rather than Word’s official heading styles. For example, Word’s heading styles help you perform the following tasks:

• Create an automatic or custom table of contents

• Create bookmarks in a PDF using Adobe Acrobat

• Use Word’s outline feature

• Use Word’s Navigation pane

Most importantly, screen reading software can identify your heading hierarchy based on Word’s styles. If you only use a large font size for headings, people who use screen readers will have less information about how your document is organized. 

How to Create Headings Using Word’s Built-In Heading Styles

1. Select the text you want to turn into a heading. (Or, move your cursor to a blank line where you want to type your new heading during the next step.)

2. Select the Home tab in the ribbon.

3. Select the appropriate heading level in the Styles group. (If you didn’t select existing text during step 2, type your new heading text after making your selection.)

4. The selected text will be formatted with the new heading style immediately.

5. Deselect the heading and then press Enter (PC) or Return (Mac) on your keyboard to move your cursor to the next line. The heading formatting will automatically turn off.

6. Save your file to save your new heading.

How to Customize Word’s Built-In Heading Styles

The following steps show how to customize the built-in heading styles in an individual Word document.

There are many ways to change styles in Word. For this tutorial, we’ll stick with the basics: font, font size, emphasis (i.e., bold, italic, or underlined), color, alignment, spacing, and indentation.

1. Select the Home tab in the ribbon (see figure 1).

2. Right-click (PC) or Control-click (Mac) the heading level in the Styles group, and then select Modify from the shortcut menu.

5. Make all necessary formatting changes in the Modify Style dialog box. Here are the eight basic modifications:

A. Font

B. Font size

C. Emphasis

D. Font color

E. Alignment

F. Line spacing

G. Spacing before and after

H. Indentation

6. (PC Users) Select Only in this document to ensure that your customized style is limited to your current document.

7. (Mac Users) Ensure that Add to template is not selected to limit your customized style to your current document.

8. Ensure that Automatically Update is not selected. (If Automatically Update is selected, you won’t be able to edit the styles of individual same-level headings.)

9. Select the OK button.

Your changes will be applied to all existing text using the heading style you just customized.

10. Save your file to save your changes.