From the course: Word 2016: Creating Long Documents

Create and use a bookmark - Microsoft Word Tutorial

From the course: Word 2016: Creating Long Documents

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Create and use a bookmark

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- [Instructor] Bookmarks in Microsoft Word work the same way that bookmarks work in .pdf documents, or in a browser, or for that matter in an app like Kindle. A bookmark is a place that you can mark and return to. So bookmarks are used for navigation. They have another utility as well in Microsoft Word that we can refer to them, and combine that with navigation. In this movie, I'm going to show you how to create a bookmark and how to use that bookmark for navigation. In the next movie, I'll show you how to refer to bookmarks using a cross-reference. In this document, there's a section that describes different types of employee statuses. This is Section Two here, which is on page three. And if I wanted to be able to quickly and easily go to two-two, which is Exempt, I can do that by inserting a bookmark. Let me show you how. If I wanted to select this entire heading, I could. I can also simply position in front of this heading because I can have a bookmark that points to a position, or a bookmark that points to a specific selection of text. We'll go to Insert and choose Bookmark. Now we're asked to name our bookmark. Bookmarks have to begin with a letter, not a number or an underscore, but they can include numbers and underscores. They can't include spaces. I'm going to name this Exempt and click Add to add this to my list of bookmarks. Now, even though my document looks the same, I know this got saved in one way. And one way I can check is quickly to go back to Insert Bookmark and notice that Exempt is on the list. If I wanted to go to that bookmark from here I can. So let me show you how this works. Let's go to the top of the document, Control Home. Let's go to Bookmark, Exempt, go to, and there we are. Let's create another bookmark for Non-Exempt. Bookmark, Bookmark Name, remember no spaces, Non-Exempt. And I will add this. Now, if I wanted to be able to display or mark that these are actual bookmarks, there's a way to do that. If you go to File, Options, choose Advanced, we're going to scroll down to Show Document Content. We can chose to show bookmarks. Don't expect anything like trumpets after I click Okay because all we're going to have is this little I-Beam, right here, this gray I-Beam that shows that a bookmark exists there. And if I create another bookmark for regular full-time, for example, and select the entire term when I do it, and type in Regular FT for full-time and add this, then you'll notice that this bookmark, because I had text selected, looks a little different. It's not just the I-Beam, it's brackets at the start and the end, which is, indeed, what this I-Beam represents. Normally the only reason I would display the bookmarks is to make sure that the bookmarks I created were actually where I thought they were. Because if I want to simply know that they exist, I can do that in the Bookmark dialogue box. I can also delete bookmarks here. And note that I no longer have any indicator that this is a bookmark, because it isn't. To turn Display Bookmarks back off, simply return to Options, Advanced, scroll down to Show Document Content, turn Show Bookmarks back off, and click Okay. In this document, the ratio of headings to text is fairly high. So it's easy for me to navigate in this document by simply turning oh the nav pane and navigating by headings. But if I have long sections of text in my document, and I don't necessarily have headings to every specific place I might wish to go to, then creating bookmarks simply for navigation is a really good idea. In the next movie, I'll show you the other good reason to create bookmarks.

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