MS Word and the Navigation tab for writing scenes?

I've had an issue with MS Word for years.  I've never purchased it because of this issue, and I know many writers such as myself who are in the same position.

I write in scenes, and I really want to use the Naviation panel of Word 2013. I select my heading styles and highlight the scene titles and I see a nice 'tree' outline visual in the Navigation panel for managing my book.

However, when one reads or prints the final word document, you don't want to see the scene titles - they are only for a writer to organize his structure. Obviously, this needs to be hidden. When I change the style's font - to make it "hidden" as someone suggested, stupidly the scene title in the navigation panel also becomes hidden as well. 

I want to smash my head against the wall.  How could such a all-encompassing writing tool be so absolutely useless when it comes to writing novels in scenes?

Is there a REAL solution to this?  Or does Microsoft put up a middle finger to all of us novel writers, and we simple can't have a book navigation capabilities without having our scene titles scattered across our final book output?

Answer
Answer
If you change the font color of your headings to white, they won't print (assuming that you are printing on white paper of course), but they still will be visible in the Navigation pane.
Stefan Blom
Microsoft 365 Word MVP since 2005
Volunteer Moderator (Office)
MS 365, Win 11 Pro
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Please note that I do not work for Microsoft
MVP program info: https://mvp.microsoft.com/
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Last updated April 21, 2024 Views 176 Applies to: