Word – Copy Word 2010 outline view to new document

copy/pastemicrosoft wordoutline

I am writing a lengthy article in Word 2010 and want to share an outline of what I have completed thusfar with a colleague. Because I have carefully applied heading 1, 2, etc. styles I can switch to outline view and see exactly what I want to share. I first looked for just how to print the darn thing. Thanks to Martin Liversage's answer to the SU question print in outline format microsoft word I found that, though the print preview indicates otherwise, the standard print command does in fact print the outline view. So I could print that to a PDF and have it at least as a file rather than hard copy. I would really prefer, however, to be able to simply copy the outline (with formatting!) so that I could paste it into an email or into another Word doc, etc. But a standard copy operation on the outline actually copies the whole document.

Is there any way to copy just the outline?

Best Answer

Make sure you've expanded all the outline sections you intend to copy, then follow the steps below. If you select an outline section that is collapsed, it will copy the sub-level text along with it.

  1. Create a character style, let's call it Outline, based on Default Paragraph Font.
  2. Right-click Heading 1 style and select all occurences.
  3. Click Outline style to apply it.
  4. Repeat steps 2-3 for Heading 2, Heading 3, etc.
  5. Now right-click Outline style and select all occurences.
  6. You have selected your outline. Now you can copy-and-paste it anywhere.
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