There’s a curious little bug hidden deep in Microsoft Word that can trip you up when there’s a table with Headings inside it. The Headings don’t appear in all the places they should such as the Navigation Pane
(Thanks to some smart Office Watchers, we’ve updated and clarified the original post)
Have a look at this simple example of the Word bug in action. Compare the headings in the document and Table of Contents with the Navigation Pane at left.
A series of standard Heading 1 styles, three in the document itself, two in a table.
All are set to Outline Level 1 which is what should control the Navigation Pane list. But not the Table of Contents, see When Word ‘Headings’ aren’t really headings
The Table of Contents shows all five headings – as it should.
But the Navigation Pane only shows the three outside the table. Wrong!
Bookmarks pane
It gets even stranger when you look at the Insert Hyperlink (Ctrl + K) ‘Place in this document’ list. This list should how the same Outline Levels as the Navigation Pane.
All five Headings are there, but two inside the table (Paris and Munich) appear as sub-headings, which they aren’t (definitely Heading 1 style and Outline Level 1).
PDF trouble
The Word bug messes up a PDF made from the Word document. The PDF ‘Bookmarks’ list has the same error as the Word navigation pane.
What Adobe PDF calls ‘Bookmarks’ are different from Word’s ‘bookmarks’.
The PDF bookmark list is wrong because Word’s PDF options are a little misleading.
“Create bookmarks using … Headings” isn’t correct and should really say …
“Create bookmarks using … Outline Levels” because that’s what Word does.
OK, OK the fully correct wording should be “Create PDF bookmarks using … Word Outline Levels”.
The PDF in-document Table of Contents is OK because it’s exported from the Word document.
Adding a level causes more trouble
Adding some Heading 2 lines (Outline Level 2) added an unwelcome extra surprise.
Again, the Navigation Pane ignores the Heading 2 / Outline Level 2 lines inside the table.
But the internal link list goes quite awry. The ‘in table’ lines are treated as the same sub-level.
What’s going on?
It’s a bug and a long-standing one too.
The same bug appears in Word 365 for Mac and even Word 2007 (when the Navigation Pane was called Document Map.
Seemingly, Word gets the Outline Level confused when it’s inside a table.
Table of Contents is OK because ToC, by default, works off Heading styles AND Outline levels. See more about Table of Contents options.
But the navigation pane is wrong (Navigation Pane only uses the Outline Levels).
Non-Heading Outline Levels
The bug still happens for non-Heading styles with an Outline Level. Here we’ve made a custom style, bold text, with Outline Level 3 (OL3). As you can see, the Navigation Pane hides the line inside the table.
The Insert Link list doesn’t show the custom style with Outline Level at all – not inside or outside the table.
By Design?
A zealous Microsoftie might try to say it’s ‘by design’ but there’s no logical reason for this. Sometimes the ‘by design’ excuse is used when they really mean “ It’s always been that way “.
The bug should be fixed but that’s unlikely. The problem will be deep in the complexity of Word code, finding and fixing the bug might have unintended consequences. Microsoft usually isn’t motivated to spend a lot of time and money to repair an obscure problem that’s been there for many years.
The best advice: don’t put Headings or Outline Levels inside tables.
Thanks to @JayBeeAU for this tip – we love a good Office bug and this is a beauty!
Possible Explanation ….
Office Watcher, Jens W. from Switzerland has a possible explanation for Word’s behavior.
From my understanding the ToC-field ‘scans’ the document – according to its settings/switches – for any paragraph with a matching style and/or outline level (plus possibly for TC-fields), regardless of their ‘hierarchical relation’.
As you pointed out, for Navigation Pane and Outline View only outline levels are used. But these have to be and obviously are interpreted in their relation to the respective preceding paragraph.
As a table resides in the text body it will always be secondary to “its” preceding heading and the outline level of a heading in this table can thus not become effective. For the Navigation Pane I don’t see why it could not be treated like a ToC, but in Outline View the effect is quite clear: Headings in tables cannot be positioned hierarchically in a sensible way.
That’s right and explains why the Insert | Link dialog shows the Outline Levels ‘below’ the Heading preceding the table. Though not the wrong levels within that sub-branch.
When Word ‘Headings’ aren’t really headings
Table of Contents basics in Word
Word links – Internal links via headings or bookmarks
Add shortcuts for all Word heading styles
