MS Word97 summary for long documents?

[RalphTheCow]

I am just a casual user of MS Word, but I would like to create some kind of way to see summary of a long document's contents. The document is in a numbered list format with two or three bold words after the number that would serve as good entries for a Table of Contents if I could find an efficient way to copy them. I've been tempted to save it as HTML and then use same-page links to jump to that section. (I know even less about HTML as you can see.)

I know I should RTFM, but does anyone have a suggestion for what the FM is? None of MS's Help Menus really do much for me. I usually find that some private person on the web does by far the best job of explaining things, such as here for Excel. I just haven't found the one for Word yet. How much variation is there from Word97 for the newer versions? Even more bloated and confusing? Or streamlined and rippling with user-tested improvements? Please? I have Word 2000 at home which I've barely opened.

 

[SQL]

Well, this ain't the easiest thing to do.

Basically, you can highlight the headings and apply a "Heading 1" style to them. So highlight the heading of each paragraph, then pick the "Heading 1" style from the drop down box next to the font box. That box normally says "normal"

Once that is done for your headings, you can go to Insert->Index and Tables. Pick the TOC tab and it is fairly self explanatory from that point. Once the TOC is created, it acts like hyperlinks (it does in 2000, not sure about 97).

Anyways, it requires some work. Benefit is once the format is done, you can change headings and recreate the TOC easier.

 

[HJB417]

I know word2k and probably word97 has an autosummorize feature under "Tools". I don't know of a manual summarize.