Hello,
I am writing a book which has many titles and subtitles in it.
I was using the document map on the left side in order to navigate quickly.
But suddenly, for no reason, many lines appear as titles there
why? i didnt do anything


i had may be 40-50 titles and subtitles and now it became hundreds... how to fix this?
i really didnt do anything i was just writing and suddenly i realized this

First: Be VERY careful using the Document Map. It is fine to use it for navigation. Do not move things around in it.

Second: The document map reflects Styles in use. You have applied styles shown in the Document Map to much of your text.

Understanding Styles in Microsoft Word

so how can i fix this situation? what is best to do? i have hundreds of titles showin in document map now, although i did not make any of them titles.

First, work with a copy of your document. Remember that UnDo is your friend.

You can find and replace styles. Figure out which style is applied to one of the bogus entries and replace the style setting with what you are using for your body text. This will catch some legitimate headings as well. You'll need to reapply your heading styles to those. Remember the keyboard shortcuts for headings 1-3.

Replace = Ctrl+H
Click on the More button then Formatting > Styles. Do this for the Find box and the Replace box with no text in either.

Note that there is an old bug with the Document Map that makes it apply "Outline level" formatting to short paragraphs (such as captions) after which these paragraphs are treated as headings. See http://wordmvp.com/FAQs/General/DocumentMap.htm (and ignore the statement that the problem has been fixed in Word 2003) where you'll find a macro to fix existing paragraphs/entries.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional