Office 2008 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual

Chapter 6. Working with Notebooks, Outlining, and Master Documents

Have you ever sat down at your Mac and pounded out a polished white paper, 25-page essay, or complete novel in one smooth pass, your words flowing logically from start to finish? Probably not. Thoughts often come in fragments, and these shards of logic form the foundation for annual reports, term papers, and books. Microsoft understands, and provides tools for better capturing and organizing those thoughts. Enter Word’s Outliner and its spin-offs the Document Map, Master Documents, and the Notebook Layout view.

Outlining is simply a way of organizing your ideas, and Notebook view is a great tool for capturing those ideas, rearranging them, and even voice-recording your thoughts. As your document grows and reaches completion, the Document Map—which resides in Word’s Navigation Pane—lets you fly through it, easily locating the page you’re looking for from among the other 147, and Master Document lets you and your co-workers create the mother of all documents.

Note

Notebook layout is a curious hybrid to be sure. On one hand, it appears that Microsoft wanted to make a utility that works as the human brain does—a way to capture your stray thoughts on “paper.” Unfortunately, it lacks the ease of use and advanced features of a full-fledged note-taking and organizational tool, like Circus Ponies’ NoteBook, or the depth of word processing ease available in other Word views. But hey, it’s a step in the right direction.