Microsoft Word

Creating a Structured Thesis

(CaST)
Course objectives:
• Add structure with sections and styles
• Apply heading numbering
• Generate automated table of contents, figures etc.
• Insert captions and cross references
• Consolidate documents and merge formatting

______________________________________________________________________________

Student & Staff Training and Support Information

Email: [email protected]

Web: https://web.library.uq.edu.au/library-services/training/

Reproduced or adapted from original content provided under Creative Commons license by
The University of Queensland Library
 UQ Library
Staff and Student I.T. Training

Table of Contents

Preparing the screen .......................................................................................................... 3

Section Breaks and Page Numbering ................................................................................ 4
Exercise 1. Inserting Section Breaks ............................................................................. 4
Exercise 2. Page numbering ......................................................................................... 6
Styles ................................................................................................................................... 8
Exercise 3. Apply quick styles ....................................................................................... 8
Exercise 4. Modify Normal Style .................................................................................... 9
Exercise 5. Modify heading style ................................................................................. 10
Exercise 6. Create a new style .................................................................................... 10
Automatic Heading Numbering ........................................................................................ 12
Exercise 7. Apply multi-level numbering to headings ................................................... 12
Exercise 8. Customise numbering ............................................................................... 12
Exercise 9. Save a custom style set ............................................................................ 13
Exercise 10. Combining documents .............................................................................. 14
Exercise 11. Change the style set ................................................................................. 14
Table of Contents .............................................................................................................. 15
Exercise 12. Generate table of contents ........................................................................ 15
Exercise 13. Navigating using the table of contents ...................................................... 16
Exercise 14. Updating table of contents ........................................................................ 16
Exercise 15. Apply “Thesis Titles” style ......................................................................... 16
Exercise 16. Formatting table of contents...................................................................... 17
Exercise 17. Generate a customised table of contents .................................................. 18
Captions and Tables of Figures ....................................................................................... 19
Exercise 18. Insert captions .......................................................................................... 19
Exercise 19. Create a table of figures............................................................................ 21
Cross-references .............................................................................................................. 22
Exercise 20. Insert a cross-reference ............................................................................ 22
Consolidation .................................................................................................................... 23
Exercise 21. Combining documents .............................................................................. 23
Exercise 22. Update all document field codes ............................................................... 24

Download the exercise files: 2 of 24 Creating a Structured Thesis (CaST)

https://web.library.uq.edu.au/library-services/training/software-training-resources
UQ Library
Staff and Student I.T. Training

Preparing the screen

1. Open the document Thesis Template Preliminary Pages
2. Turn on the Navigation Pane and Rulers

• Click the View tab

• Place ticks in the Ruler and Navigation Pane tick boxes

3. Turn on the hidden characters to display the pilcrows and page

breaks
• Click the Home tab
• Click the Show/Hide button (approximately one third of the way
across the ribbon)
4. Go to the last page (page 8)
• Click on the empty pilcrow above the text
Remainder of the thesis
• Press Ctrl (Command on the Mac) +
Enter to create a page break and move
the text and bullet list to a new page
• Select the contents of the bullet list from
Dedications down to Appendices

• Click the Bullet List button to turn off

the bullets
• Click the Indent button to remove the
indents
• Click at the end of List of Figures
• Press Enter
• Add the text ‘List of’ and delete the
ampersand
• Go to the end of List of Tables and press
enter
• Add the text List of Charts

3 of 24 Creating a Structured Thesis (CaST)

 UQ Library
Staff and Student I.T. Training

Section Breaks and Page Numbering

In Word you can set your page numbers to run consecutively across all pages or, if you have
used section breaks in the document, to restart numbering when you reach a new section.

Exercise 1. Inserting Section Breaks

With section inserted in a document, it is possible to reformat the page numbers between
sections. For example, you can have Roman numerals for an introductory section and Arabic
numerals for the main part of the document. Section breaks also allow a document to have
more than one page layout so you can swap between portrait and landscape layouts.

Insert a section break

1. Click on the first page in front of the visible Page Break underneath Name of the
enrolling unit
2. Press the delete key on the keyboard to delete the page break
3. Click on the line above at the end of Name of the enrolling unit
4. Press the Enter key on the keyboard
5. Go to the Layout tab
6. Click Breaks
7. Select Section Breaks: Next Page
See below the appearance of the interface for Windows (left) and Mac (right)

8. A Section Break should now be visible next to Name of the enrolling unit
9. Go to the last page (Ctrl+End shortcut)
10. Click at the end of the text List of Abbreviations used in the thesis
11. Press Enter
12. Go to the Layout tab
13. Click Breaks
14. Select Section Breaks: Next Page

4 of 24 Creating a Structured Thesis (CaST)

 UQ Library
Staff and Student I.T. Training

Remove Link between sections

1. Return to the first page of the document
2. Right click bottom of page then select Edit Footer (the footer will open and it should
say Footer - Section 1 on the left hand side)
3. The Header and Footer tab will open as well
4. Move to the next page of the document and look at the footer at the bottom
5. It should say Footer - Section 2 on the left and Same as Previous on the right.
This ‘Same as Previous’ message means the two sections are linked and what you do in one
will be repeated in the other. To avoid this (if necessary) we need to unlink the sections
6. Click into the footer
7. On the Header and Footer tab Click Link to Previous button
See below the appearance of the interface for Windows (left) and Mac (right)

8. The Same as Previous words on the right will disappear and this will ensure section 2
is independent of the previous section.
With an independent Section 2 we will be able to put page numbers into our document
starting from the second page thereby leaving the first page blank

5 of 24 Creating a Structured Thesis (CaST)

 UQ Library
Staff and Student I.T. Training

Exercise 2. Page numbering

Insert page numbers into the document

A) Windows users:
Whilst still in section 2 and on what is Page 2 of
the document…
1. Go to Insert tab
2. Click Page Number
3. Select Bottom of Page
4. Select Plain Number 2
5. Close Header and Footer (if necessary)
6. Save the document

B) Mac users:
Whilst still in section 2 and on what is Page 2 of the document…
1. Go to the Insert tab
2. Click the Page Number button
3. Choose Page Number
In the Page Numbers dialogue box
4. Choose the required Position and Alignment
5. Click OK
6. Save the document

We should now have page numbers in our document, excluding the cover page

6 of 24 Creating a Structured Thesis (CaST)

 UQ Library
Staff and Student I.T. Training

Format page numbers by section

1. Click on Page Number button
2. Select Bottom of Page
3. Select Plain Number 2
4. Click Page Number
5. Click Format Page Numbers…
See below the appearance of the interface for Windows (left) and Mac (right)

6. Click ‘Number format’ arrow

7. Select Roman Numerals
8. Set Start at: i
9. Click OK
10. Close Header and Footer tab
11. Save and close the document

See below the appearance of the interface for Windows (left) and Mac (right)

We should now have page numbers in our document formatted as Roman Numerals in Section
2, and in Arabic numbers in Section 3 (last page of the document).

7 of 24 Creating a Structured Thesis (CaST)

 UQ Library
Staff and Student I.T. Training

Styles
What is a Word style?
A style is a combination of settings that can be stored together under a style name and can
be applied to portions of the document with a single click. Styles are used to apply text and
paragraph formatting quickly and easily.

Exercise 3. Apply quick styles

Open the document ‘Unformatted_thesis.docx’

Apply Heading 1 to the headings

• Microsoft Word
• StarOffice Writer

1. Select ‘Microsoft Word’

2. Click the Heading 1 quick style pane to apply
the style
3. Repeat for the rest of the required headings
Hover the mouse over a quick style to see a Live Preview of the style (Windows only)

Apply Heading 2 to the subheadings

• Frequently Asked Questions
• Writer saves documents in its own format
• Word cannot open Writer documents
• Some minor functions are not available in Writer
• Writer is incompatible with Endnote

4. Select ‘Frequently Asked Questions’

5. Click the Heading 2 quick style pane
Repeat for the rest of the required subheadings

Apply Heading 3 to the sub subheadings

• How do I recover a Word document after a crash or mistake
on a UQ Library computer?
• Word closed unexpectedly. Where is my document?
• Why can’t I open a Word document?

6. Select ‘How do I recover a Word Document

7. Click the Heading 3 quick style pane
Repeat for the rest of the required sub subheadings

8 of 24 Creating a Structured Thesis (CaST)

 UQ Library
Staff and Student I.T. Training

Modifying Styles
When using styles, you format the document by modifying the style definitions rather than
directly formatting the document text. Formatting using styles is reliable, consistent and saves
time.

Exercise 4. Modify Normal Style

1. Select a Normal paragraph

2. Go to the Home Tab
3. Right click on Normal quick style
4. Select Modify
5. Make changes to style
e.g. Times New Roman, size 12 and 1.5 line spacing
6. Click OK

9 of 24 Creating a Structured Thesis (CaST)

 UQ Library
Staff and Student I.T. Training

Exercise 5. Modify heading style

It is generally recommended to use the built-in Heading styles: Heading 1, Heading 2 etc for
major and minor topic points and modify these styles to suit your needs. Many of Microsoft
Word’s automatic features, such as Table of Contents, Multilevel Numbering and Figure
Caption, are based on these styles.

1. Select heading: Microsoft Word

2. Go to the Home Tab
3. Right click on Heading 1 quick style
4. Select Modify
5. Make changes to style (as in Modify Normal
Style image above)
e.g. Times New Roman, size 16, automatic colour and 1.5 line spacing
6. Click OK
Repeat for Heading 2 and 3.
• Heading 2 – Times New Roman, size 14, automatic colour and 1.5 line spacing
• Heading 3 – Times New Roman, size 13, automatic colour and 1.5 line spacing

Exercise 6. Create a new style

There may be times when the built in styles are not suitable for modification. In this case it
may be necessary to create a new style.

1. Select any text that is formatted with the Normal style

2. Click the (on Windows) - Styles group dialog box launcher or (on Mac) – Styles
Pane button on the Home tab
The Styles Pane will open

See below the appearance of the interface for Windows (left) and Mac (right)

10 of 24 Creating a Structured Thesis (CaST)

 UQ Library
Staff and Student I.T. Training

3. Click the New Style button in the Style Pane

Located in the bottom left hand corner of the Styles Pane on Windows
Located near the top on Mac

See below the appearance of the interface for Windows (left) and Mac (right)

4. Enter the following details for the

style:
• Name: “Thesis Title”
• Style type Paragraph
• Based on Normal
• Following Para Normal
5. Define the style settings;
• Font Times New Roman,
Bold, Underline
• Size 12
6. Click OK

The new Thesis Titles style should appear in the style

gallery and will be applied to your selected text.
If necessary reapply the Normal style to the text

11 of 24 Creating a Structured Thesis (CaST)

 UQ Library
Staff and Student I.T. Training

Automatic Heading Numbering

Multilevel numbering is the process of applying a numbering system to your headings. Having
a numbering system, such as 1, 1.1, 1.2 etc, is an important part of any long and/or complex
document. This navigational aid can be applied directly from the ribbon. The best approach is
to link the numbering to the heading styles. Ideally, you should use built-in headings
sequentially or automatic numbering will be incorrect.

Exercise 7. Apply multi-level numbering to headings

1. Click on text with the heading 1 style, e.g.
‘Microsoft Word’
2. Click on the Multilevel list button in the
Paragraphs group on the Home tab

3. Select the list style which has numbering linked to heading styles.

This will apply numbering throughout the document to text that have heading styles applied.
Any new text styled as a heading will be numbered automatically any other style will not
be numbered. Styles based on a heading style will have the numbering scheme applied

Exercise 8. Customise numbering

If the multilevel list used for numbering is not suitable for your needs you can customise it.
4. Click on the multilevel list button
5. Select ‘Define new Multilevel List…'
6. Type ‘Chapter’ before the count in the Enter
formatting for number: box
Be careful NOT to remove the shaded number field. If you do; reset by selecting the ‘Number style for this
level’ as 1, 2, 3, …

See below the appearance of the interface for Windows (left) and Mac (right)

7. Click OK
8. Save the document
Your numbering scheme will update throughout your document.

12 of 24 Creating a Structured Thesis (CaST)

 UQ Library
Staff and Student I.T. Training

Exercise 9. Save a custom style set

1. Go to the Design tab
2. Click the More button
Windows users: bottom right of all the designs
Mac users: hover the mouse over the designs near the middle for the More button to appear
See below the appearance of the interface for Windows (left) and Mac (right)

The style set in use is displayed in the “This Document” section

3. Click on Save as a new Style Set…

New Style Sets must be saved to the default location

Mac users: ensure the location says Style Sets
4. Enter the name “thesis styles” for the new style set
See below the appearance of the interface for Windows (left) and Mac (right)

5. Click Save button

6. Save the document
The new style set is available from the gallery on the Design tab under the Custom section in
Windows but is located in the Built-in section at the bottom in Mac. This style set will also be
available for use in other documents on this computer.
See below the appearance of the interface for Windows (left) and Mac (right)

13 of 24 Creating a Structured Thesis (CaST)

 UQ Library
Staff and Student I.T. Training

Exercise 10. Combining documents

Save and close the previous document and Open ‘ThesisPreliminaryPages.docx’
1. Go to the last page
2. Click at the end Main text of the thesis and insert
a page break (Ctrl or CMD + Enter)
3. Highlight the text ‘Main Text of Thesis’
4. Go to Insert tab
5. Click Object arrow
6. Select Text from File…
7. Browse to the file: Unformatted Thesis.docx
8. Click on Insert
The ‘Unformatted Thesis’ will be inserted into the Prelim Pages and will adopt the styles of the destination
document.

Exercise 11. Change the style set

Change the style set

1. Click on the Design tab
2. Hover over a style set
Live preview will display a sample in document (Windows only)

3. Locate and click the Thesis Styles style set to apply the change
Click the more button and the locate the Thesis Style set in the custom section (Windows) or the built-
in section (Mac) near the bottom
All applied styles will update accordingly

See below the appearance of the interface for Windows (left) and Mac (right)

14 of 24 Creating a Structured Thesis (CaST)

 UQ Library
Staff and Student I.T. Training

Table of Contents
A table of contents is an automatically generated list of styled headings within your document
and their associated page numbers. It is used for reference and navigation purposes. The
simplest way to create a table of contents is by applying heading styles throughout your
document - for example: Heading 1, Heading 2, etc. When creating a table of contents
Microsoft Word searches the document for these headings.

Exercise 12. Generate table of contents

Insert a Table of Contents

1. Go to Page vii
2. Position cursor below the heading ‘Table
of Contents’
3. Go to the References tab
4. Click on Table of Contents button
5. Select Custom Table of Contents…
6. Customise settings as required
• Tab Leader
• Formats
• Show Levels
Note: Heading Styles are automatically assigned ‘levels’.
Heading 1 is level 1, Heading 2 is level 2 and so on. Show
levels 3 will show Heading 1, 2 and 3. If you wish all
Headings up to Heading 5 to appear in the Table of
Contents adjust the Show levels value to 5

7. Click OK

A table of contents will be inserted based on all the

recognised heading styles applied in the document.
Formatting and spacing will be based on the default
settings of the Table of Contents (TOC) styles.

15 of 24 Creating a Structured Thesis (CaST)

 UQ Library
Staff and Student I.T. Training

Exercise 13. Navigating using the table of contents

The table of contents is inserted as a field code and can be used for navigation.
1. Hold CTRL (Command key on Mac) on the
keyboard and Click on the table of contents
entry you want to go to.
2. Mac users may need to click on the page
numbers within the table for this to work
3. Press Ctrl + Home to return to the first page
Or
• Press Alt +  (left keyboard arrow) to travel back to the table of contents

Exercise 14. Updating table of contents

A table of contents is a snapshot of the text and styles in your document at any point in time.
If you edit your document, you may need to update the table of contents to reflect these
changes and rectify page numbering.
Manually update the table of contents

1. Right click on the table of contents

2. Click Update Field

OR
• Click on the Table of Contents
• Press function key F9

3. Select Update entire table

4. Click OK

Exercise 15. Apply “Thesis Titles” style

1. Go to the end of the Table of Contents

2. Select List of Figures, List of Tables, List of
Charts and List of Abbreviations
3. Apply the ‘Thesis Titles’ style
4. Go to the end of the document and repeat for
Bibliography or List of References and
Appendices

16 of 24 Creating a Structured Thesis (CaST)

 UQ Library
Staff and Student I.T. Training

Exercise 16. Formatting table of contents

To make formatting changes to a table of contents modify the Table of Contents styles and
NOT the table. For example to modify Heading 1 entries, in the table of contents, modify the
style TOC 1, to modify Heading 2 entries you modify the style TOC 2 and so on.

Format a table of contents

1. Select any text in the Table of Contents that is formatted with the TOC 1
2. Click the (on Windows) - Styles group dialog box launcher or (on Mac) – Styles
Pane button on the Home tab
The Styles Pane will open
See below the appearance of the interface for Windows (left) and Mac (right)

3. Select any text in the Table of Contents that is formatted with the TOC 1
4. Click the (on Windows) - Styles group dialog box launcher or (on Mac) – Styles
Pane button on the Home tab
The Styles Pane will open

5. Scroll to and right click on TOC 1

6. Select Modify

5. Click the B for Bold

6. Click on Format > Paragraph

7. Click on Indents and Spacing tab

17 of 24 Creating a Structured Thesis (CaST)

 UQ Library
Staff and Student I.T. Training

8. Enter 18pt spacing before

9. Apply 6pt spacing after paragraph style
10. Click OK
11. Click OK again

Exercise 17. Generate a customised table of contents

When Microsoft Word creates a table of contents it does so by looking for a predefined set of
heading styles. If you create your own styles to use within a document, for example – Thesis
Titles style, these styles may not be included in the table of contents. It is possible to
customise the table of contents to include any newly created styles.

Insert a customised table of contents

1. Click on the table of contents

2. Go to the References tab
3. Click on Table of Contents button
4. Select Custom Table of Contents…

5. Click the Options button

6. Indicate ‘Thesis Titles’ to be included at
level 1
7. Click OK

You will be prompted to replace existing Table of Contents

8. Click OK

18 of 24 Creating a Structured Thesis (CaST)

 UQ Library
Staff and Student I.T. Training

A Table of Contents is inserted with the requested styles

included. The style included will be formatted using the
style level you entered. i.e. Level 1 = TOC 1

Captions and Tables of Figures

In order to identify objects in a document for further referencing they must have an attached
caption. A caption is a descriptive label and the description for an image, table or equation.
Crucially, captions use the Caption style. It is possible to create new caption labels for other
data types as well; for example - charts.

Exercise 18. Insert captions

1. Click on first image in document

Handles will appear in each corner when an object is selected.

2. Go to References tab
3. Click on Insert Caption

4. Select Figure from the Label dropdown

19 of 24 Creating a Structured Thesis (CaST)

 UQ Library
Staff and Student I.T. Training

5. Click on the Numbering button (Windows users) or click on Format (Mac users)
See below the appearance of the interface for Windows (left) and Mac (right)

6. Check ‘Include Chapter Number’

7. Click OK

8. Click in the caption box next to the

caption label ‘Figure 1-1’
9. Type ‘Fingers on Keys’
10. Click OK
Repeat for other objects in document

Create new caption label

You may need a new label if your object does not fit the
default labels.

1. Select Chart
2. On the References tab choose the
Insert Caption button
3. Choose New Label

20 of 24 Creating a Structured Thesis (CaST)

 UQ Library
Staff and Student I.T. Training

4. Enter the new label name ‘Chart’

5. Click OK

Chart will now be the selected label in the labels list.

6. Click OK

Exercise 19. Create a table of figures

A table of figures is similar to a table of contents. The difference is that a table of figures shows
Caption styled text and related page numbers for a particular caption label: Figure, Table or
Equation etc. It is therefore possible to create separate tables for any other captioned items
in the document based on their label.

Insert a table of figures

1. Place cursor below ‘Table of Figures’
2. Go to the References tab
3. Click Insert Table of Figures button
4. Check Caption label indicates Figure
5. Click OK
See below the appearance of the interface for Windows (left) and Mac (right)

All figures with a recognised caption for the label ‘Figure’ will be displayed.

6. Repeat steps 1 through 5 to create a Table of Tables and a Table of Charts

underneath the respective headings

21 of 24 Creating a Structured Thesis (CaST)

 UQ Library
Staff and Student I.T. Training

Cross-references
A cross reference is an identifying path to any numbered or labelled item or portion of the
document. In Microsoft Word it is possible to create a cross reference using the cross
reference feature available on the References tab. Cross references can only be used within
one document and cannot reference separate external files.

Exercise 20. Insert a cross-reference

1. Go to paragraph - 2.2 Word cannot open

writer documents
2. Select and delete the text Figure 1

3. Go to References tab
4. Click Cross-reference button

5. Select settings for cross-reference

• Reference type: Figure
• For which caption: Figure 1-1
• Insert reference to: Entire caption
6. Click Insert
The dialog box doesn’t close to allow for additional
information on the cross reference.

To add page number to cross reference

7. Select settings for cross reference page

number
• Reference type: Figure
• For which caption: Figure 1-1
• Insert reference to: Page number
• Check Include above/below
This will add “on page” to your cross reference

8. Click Insert
9. Click Close

The cross reference will include the figure caption details

and its page number.

22 of 24 Creating a Structured Thesis (CaST)

 UQ Library
Staff and Student I.T. Training

Consolidation

Exercise 21. Combining documents

To combine a number of documents into one long document you can insert the contents of a
file into a section of another document (as previously performed in Exercise 10)

Insert a section break:

This is only required if the section break has not been inserted.

1. Move to end of Chapter 2

2. Go to the Layout tab
3. Click Breaks
4. Select Section Breaks: Next Page

To insert a file
5. Go to Insert tab
6. Click Object arrow
7. Select Text from File…

8. Browse to the file:

Thesis_Chapter_3.docx
9. Click on Insert

If Heading numbering is not consecutive after consolidating and you cannot correct this by
right mouse clicking a heading and choosing Continue numbering you may need to reapply
the styles. If you need to reapply styles you should do this from the first instance of a style
being used. In the case of this document the first instance of Heading 1 is the heading
Microsoft Word. The first instance of Heading 2 is Frequently asked questions and so on.

1. Select heading 1 Microsoft Word

2. Move your mouse to the style Heading 1 in the style gallery and Right mouse click
and Select All X Instance(s)
3. Left mouse click the Heading 1 style in the gallery to Reapply the Heading 1 style
4. Select the heading 1.1 Frequently asked questions
5. Right mouse click on Heading 2 in the style gallery and Select All X Instance(s)
6. Reapply the Heading 2 style by left clicking on the Heading 2 style in the gallery

23 of 24 Creating a Structured Thesis (CaST)

 UQ Library
Staff and Student I.T. Training

Exercise 22. Update all document field codes

Although cross-referencing and captions provide automation in the document, you have to
address amendments and modifications that take place as you work. For example if you
manually move a captioned image to a new location the caption label may then show an
incorrect label number. To ensure your references are displayed accurately you can update
them as you work by choosing to update the field codes.

1. Select whole document; Ctrl + A or CMD+A in Mac

2. Press F9
3. Select ‘Update entire table’ for table of
contents, table of figures, table of tables and
table of charts
Check that all image captions, cross references and
table of figures have updated
Repeat F9 if necessary

Important note: it is important to perform this type of formatting while track changes are not in use. Track changes
will note each automatic change as an update to be confirmed and delay automatic numbers from working properly
until confirmed.

24 of 24 Creating a Structured Thesis (CaST)