How to start MS Word with Navigation Pane in a collapsed state

If you close the Navigation Pane in the last open document in Word before closing Word, it will open with the Navigation Pane closed.

If the Navigation Pane is open, it will display the top three levels when you open a document.

Do you want something different? If so, what? One level?

yes.

I want the navigation pane to start opened.

And, I want all nodes to be collapsed. e.g. showing the H1's only.

I'm afraid you want something that is not available. The levels of the Navigation Pane are not accessible via options, settings, or macros as far as I know.

You'll just have to right-click and tell Word you only want the first level every time.

Workaround: You could use a custom Table of Contents in a Marginal Text Box or Frame in the Header to give you something similar in the document itself.

The people who can make changes to Word seldom see anything in this forum. They do read feedback through the feedback mechanism in Word and UserVoice Word for Windows. You can make suggestions.

As Charles says, the navigation pane is not exposed to VBA so it can't be done directly. It might be possible to do it via sendkeys but I'm not sure on that either.

I suppose just right clicking any heading in the navpane and pressing C is not quick enough for you?

yes right now i have to right-click and press C

it's not bad

But i have so many books. And i open files all day long.

So it'd be nice to start in a collapsed state

>.<

Actually i forgot:

Just pressing right-click then C is not enough. (Because, the sub nodes are still in an open state.)

So i have to press right-click then H then 1. And that works.

>.<