Microsoft Word offers many tools for formatting your document in a way that will present your work professionally and impressively. We’ll show you five of these tools in a step-by-step guide that you can follow to impress your readers.

Step 1: Set Word’s Styles

This is our unformatted document that we’re going to spruce up.

The first step is tocustomize and use the stylesoffered by Word. This is the main look of your document and will dictate much of what is presented and how. The “Styles” can be found in the “Home” tab.

Word document with unformatted text.

Format the headings and the normal text to however you want them to look through the styles. Right-click on a style in the “Styles” group and click “Modify” to alter their settings. We’d recommend the following modifications:

Use Word’s Format Painterto save time. Once you have formatted the first heading through styles, double-click the “Format Painter” icon and simply click on all the headings you want to have the same style. Use the same method for the other styles in your document.

Word’s ‘Styles’ group.

Here’s what we have after having modified and applied the styles:

Step 2: Create Word’s Multilevel Lists

We now need touse the multilevel list functionto number our headings. Now that we’ve applied the heading styles, Word knows that these are the parts that need to be numbered. Click your first heading and click the “Multilevel List” icon. Next, click “Define New Multilevel List”.

You can choose an existing multilevel list style here, but this gives you less flexibility, and we think it’s best to define your own settings.

Word document showing text with the styles modified and applied.

In the dialog box that opens, change your settings to how you would like them to be.

We like to use the following settings:

Now, move to level 2 at the top of the dialog box and set the same settings, except for the font size (in our case, this is 13.5 pt), and in the “Include Level Number From” setting, choose “Level 1”. When you have finished this step, click “OK”.

Your first header will now be correctly formatted. Usethe Format Painterto apply the multilevel list to the other level 1 headings in your document. Then, click any of your level two headings, go back to the multilevel list icon, and choose the style you have just created. If your level 2 numbering isn’t accurate, right-click the number and click “Continue Numbering”.

Multilevel list

Here’s what our document looks like after adding styles and creating the multi-level list.

Step 3: Insert Word’s Page Breaks

We now want to separate our introduction section from the rest of the chapters in our document byadding a page break. First, turn on the “Show/Hide” function by clicking the “¶” icon in the “Paragraph” group of the “Home” tab—this lets us see where the page break is once we have added it.

Click before the heading of your second section (where you want the break to appear). Then, in the Layout tab in the ribbon, click “Breaks” in the Page Setup group. Finally, click “Page” in the drop-down options that appear.

‘Define New Multilevel List’ dialog box with the six steps highlighted.

You will see that the introduction is now separated from the next section in your document.

We also want to separate the conclusion onto its own page, so follow the same steps again to do this.

Word document showing the menu that appears when you right-click the level 2 numbering, and highlighting where ‘Continue Numbering’ is located.

If your multilevel list numbering disappears after the page break, use the Format Painter to fix it.

Step 4: Format Word’s Page Numbers

The second-to-last step to achieving a perfectly formatted document is toadd page numbersto the footers. Double-click in the footer area of any page in your document. Then, click “Page Number” in the Header and Footer group, hover over “Bottom Of Page,” and click “Plain Number 2”. This will add page numbers to the bottom of our page, centrally aligned.

If you’d prefer, you canmake the page numbering not appear on the first pageof your document.

Word document with the headings and multilevel lists formatted.

Step 5: Add Word’s Table of Contents

The final step is toadd a table of contents, which we can do because we have set header styles and added page numbers to our document.

Go to the very start of your document, click between your first header’s number and title, press Enter, and then move your cursor back up to the space you have created above your first header.

Word document highlighting where the Show/Hide icon is in the ‘Paragraph’ group.

In the “References” tab of the ribbon, click “Table of Contents” and click “Custom Table Of Contents”.

In the dialog box, create the following settings:

Click “OK” to see your table of contents appear. To add a heading to the contents table, place your cursor at the top of the table, press Enter, and then create your heading using the first heading style. You should also add another page break after the contents to separate this from your introduction.

Finally, click the “¶” icon one more time to remove the paragraph markers, and you’ll see the final product!

Word document showing how to add a page break in the ‘Page Setup" group of the ‘Layout’ ribbon.

you’re able to nowedit and proofread your document, andsave it as a PDFto lock your new formatting!

Word document with the first two sections separated by a page break.