Kindle Publishing: Apply Heading Tags for Table of Contents

We are starting here with the cleaned-up file for my children's book, A Donkey Named Minnie.

As you can see from the screen shot above, it is pretty plain-looking, but I have typed in the title of the book, and titles (or headings) for the major paragraphs.

To apply Heading Styles,  open your Styles and Formatting box, as we showed you in earlier lessons

(Choose Format from the Menu at the top of the screen, then choose Styles and Formatting from the drop down list. Your Styles and Formatting box will display at the right of your screen).

With your "cleaned-up" file open in MS Word, your Styles and Formatting box will have very few Styles listed.

Many more styles are available, although few are recognized by Kindle.

To see all the styles that are available, in MS Word, look at the bottom bar of the Styles and Formatting box. There you will see a 1-line box with the label, "Show" at the left end, and a small down arrow at the  right end.

Click that down arrow and choose "All Styles", to see all the Styles that it's possible to use in your MS Word document. That will cause all Styles to be displayed... many that we haven't seen before, and most we will never see again, for that matter.

NOTE! Only a few of the styles you see there will work with the Kindle.

Now, if you haven't done so, before, create a "title" or "heading" for each paragraph important enough that you want it to appear in the Table of Contents, or, even if you don't plan to have a Table of Contents, is important enough that you want to call the reader's attention to it.

A Donkey Named Minnie has three major paragraphs that require headings (or titles, if you prefer that word, plus the Title of the book.

To install the Title, I'll highlight the phrase  A Donkey Named Minnie at the at the top of my page, then click on  Title from the Styles and Format box at the right of my screen.

The Styles names are in alphabetical order, so you may have to scroll down in your box to see "Title", along with any other Style name that starts with the letter "T" in the list.

Next, I'll apply the proper code to each of my Heading titles.

With my computer's cursor at Minnie arrives at Grannie Annie's Place, I find Heading 1 in my Styles at the right of my screen and click it.  Immediately, that title appears in a bold large font.

So, now my top level heading is set up.

I now go through the file to install codes on the other major paragraph headings.

At the paragraph heading, Minnie Enthralls the Humans, I assign a second level paragraph tag by selecting it with my cursor, then clicking Heading 2 in the Styles List.

I assign a level 3 to the paragraph heading Miniature Mediterranean Donkeys.

But this time, instead of selecting Miniature Mediterranean Donkeys, then going to the Styles and Formatting box, then finding the tag I want (Heading 3), then clicking on Heading 3, I do it the Easy as Pie way.

With the heading, Miniature Mediterranean Donkeys selected, I use the shortcut key MS Word has built in... CTRL-ALT-3, to apply the Heading 3 tag.

You can do the same with Heading 1, use shortcut CTRL-ALT-1 and Heading 2, use shortcut key CTRL-ALT-2.

I didn't tell you about the shortcut keys before because I wanted to be sure you understand how to apply tags from the Styles and Formatting box.

BUT... these are the only shortcut keys for headings pre-built by Word. If you need Headings beyond level 3, you will have to select them from the Styles and formatting box

You can, however, create your own shortcut keys for additional levels if you need them.

Unless you will be using them a lot, it's better to leave the short-cut keys for more intensive work.

Now... I don't have Headings 4 through Heading 9, but I typed those words into my document so I could show you how they work, so if you need these deeper levels, you will know where to find them.

You can see what they will look like in the screen shots below.

In the next lesson, I'll show you how to create your own Table of Contents with as many as 9 levels... the Easy as Pie way, with Microsoft Word.

Create Table of Contents

CJ's Easy as Pie Way

As owner and operator, and now largely retired, chief writer, of a small documentation company, I still love to do what I do best.

I've learned that there's almost always an easier way to do almost anything, including Publishing to the Amazon Kindle.

How to publish to the Kindle is the main focus of this site, but also included are some favorite things that the Easy as Pie way gives Writers and Publishers time to enjoy.

Scroll down a page or two in any post to see a list of articles about publishing to the Kindle.  Just click on any summary to read the entire article.

At My Kindle Books, you can see excerpts from my stories about two cats, three donkeys, and four dogs, as they share space and adventures.

Also at My Kindle Books is a link to my Grocery Price Book, available for the Kindle on Amazon.  That makes your every day grocery shopping easier,  while the Easy Way Gourmet Store on the left sidebar of this page makes finding special foods easy.

Browse the Kindle Store, also on the left sidebar, to see what all the fuss is about... read about the Kindle 2, Kindle DX, Kindle covers, and Kindle accessories.

Free Kindle Books
The last item at the bottom of the left column displays a list of the most popular free Kindle Books.

Classics on the Kindle
Near the bottom of the left sidebar is a list of classics available as free or low-cost Kindle Books.


Contact Us:

cj-01@cjs-easy-as-pie.com

Steps to Clean Up MS Word and Publish to the Kindle

If you already have a Kindle file, but it’s not formatted right:

Are the first-line indents all wrong?

Does it have uneven spacing?

Are paragraph breaks and page breaks in the wrong places?

Is your Kindle eBook just, in general, messy-looking?

Most of those problems can be fixed quite easily in your MS Word file.

Most of the errors described above are caused when the person who typed your manuscript  entered extra spaces and tabs (usually to create first-line indents) and extra paragraph returns, instead of formatting with MS Word Styles.

That’s what MS Word calls “Direct” formatting, and it must be taken out the same way… by hand… using MS Word’s Search and Replace to clean out all those extra spaces and tabs that are causing your Kindle file to look so ragged.

To see how to clean up your manuscript, go here: 

Clean Up MS Word

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Publishing for the Kindle: Strip Unwanted Code from an old MS Word File

How to Clean up an Old MS Word File

Almost all MS Word files need at least some cleaning before being converted to the Kindle format.

If you have a truly old file that has no formatting you want to save, the best idea is clear out everything with one of the “quick and dirty” methods described below.

If your file has italics, bold, and/or images, you may want to try less drastic methods first, with:

Take out MS Word Trash by Hand

That will remove most of the clutter that causes an untidy-looking Kindle eBook, but preserves your italics, bold, and other formatting you properly entered with MS Word Styles.

That clutter includes, but is not limited to, extra page breaks, extra paragraph breaks, extra spaces, extra periods, extra commas, and other “user errors”.

It won’t remove “MS Word bloat”, and it won’t remove trash code hiding under the surface.

There’s always a chance (though not a very good one) that your file really doesn’t have any hidden code that will mess up your Kindle file.

So… before you take the drastic measures necessary to clear out the bloat (which may also clear out code you want), consider the following:

Take out MS Word Trash by Hand

Once you have gone through that process, and your file looks clean, it’s time to put it to the test by creating a Sample Kindle file that you can view with Kindle Previewer or on your own Kindle device.

How to Create and Download a Sample of Your Kindle Format eBook

When you preview your newly created Kindle format file, you may decide that there is no hope for it… you have to clear out all the old code.

If you don't have a lot of formatting such as italics and bold fonts, that should be your first choice... it will save much time.

But if you have a lot of formatting you want to preserve, you may be able to use a less drastic method.

There are several ways to do that, with the best one for you depending on the current condition of your own MS Word file.

The first thing to try is to simply return all formatting to "Normal".

Apply Normal Style to Entire MS Word Doc File

To do that, "select" or "highlight" your entire file with CTRL-A, then do a CTRLSHIFT-S to display your Styles List, choose Normal from the list, and click the "Reapply" button.

If you try this little trick early in this process... before you've made changes that make Normal lose its place, it may even leave your bold and italics intact... saving you a lot of time.

If your file is in really bad shape, your best choice may be the “quick and dirty” approach, which Mark Coker of Smashwords calls the Nuclear Option:

Mark Coker's The Nuclear Option

You can take your file all the way back to plain text by copying it out to Notepad, then back into a clean MS Word page.

(This is the same thing Mark Coker calls the "Nuclear" approach.  He is more comfortable with it than I am... I prefer trying a less drastic method first.)

That will clear out “MS Word bloat”, along with all your formatting, such as italics and bold, and any special paragraph formats.

It also will clear out all your page breaks, section breaks and pictures or illustrations.

It will not take out extra paragraph returns, manual page breaks, tabs, extra spaces, and the long list of clutter that still must be removed by hand.

MS Word's Clear Formatting

A more gentle approach is the “Clear Formatting” feature of MS Word.

Clear Formatting will also clear out MS Word bloat, along with italics and bold, and other formatting you may want.

It will not, as Notepad does, clear page and section breaks, and it won’t remove your images.

Clean up an MS Word 2003 doc file With Clear Formatting.

From the Menu at the top of the screen, choose Format|Styles & Formatting

Menu|Format|Styles & Formatting|Clear Formatting

Select Styles and Formatting from the Format drop down menu, as shown in the above screen shot.

The Styles and Formatting box will open on the right side of the screen.  The way I have mine set, it takes up almost half my screen; yours may look different, depending on your own settings.

Notice the first item is Clear Formatting.

That selection will clear the formatting from anything you have selected in  your text.  You could clear just one word if you wanted to, but we are going to select and clear the entire file.

Do CTRL-A, to select  your entire file:

With your entire file “selected”, and highlighted, press Clear Formatting at the top of the Styles and Formatting box at the right of your screen.

Formatting and hidden codes are gone.

Poof! The formatting (along with most of the “bloat”) is gone!

Well… most of the formatting is gone. As you can see, the photos are still in place, so you know some code is still holding them in place.

Paragraph breaks are also still in place. That will make it easier to put things back together.

If I had a file like this with a large number of photos, I might be tempted to try to leave this code in place and test my file by creating a Sample:

How to Create and Download a Sample of Your Kindle Format eBook

To see if it will work this way so I don’t have to go through the steps of  putting all the photos back in.

Depending on how good the code was to begin with, sometimes this works; sometimes it doesn’t.

But, for this lesson, we are going to clear out all the old code, so I can show you how easy it is, and how easy it is to put everything back together.

The Nuclear Option Step-by-Step

Next, we will look at how we can clear out even this code that’s holding the photos in place.

To do that, select all your text with CTRL-A and cut it all out with CTRL-X.

Next, open a new blank page with your little plain vanilla “Notepad” that comes with Windows, and paste your entire file into it with CTRL-V.

Save the Notepad file with some disposable name like XX or Clear Format… to make sure Notepad clears out all the code.

Look at Format at the Menu Bar of Notepad to make sure that Word Wrap is is NOT checked. You want nice straight lines of text; each paragraph should be just one line.

Next, do a CTRL-A to select all the text that you have just pasted into Notepad… text that Notepad has cleaned up, then do a CTRL-C. to copy it out to the clipboard.

Now open a clean blank file… I’ve named mine “A Donkey Named Minnie”... and paste your clipboard contents into it with CTRL-V.

It looks pretty pitiful and naked now, doesn’t it… with no formatting?

But now we have a good clean file with no errant code, and no bloat.

Next, we will put our photos back in, set up the titles and headers we want in our final file,  and even create a properly inter-active Table of Contents, using MS Word.

To find out how to do each of those tasks the Easy as Pie way, use the Search Box just under the Birds on a Tight-Rope on the home page.

Kindle Publishing: Show All MS Word Formatting Marks

MS Word gets kicked around a lot because  many of its formatting codes or marks cause problems in the final output.

The truth is, most of those problems are caused by code that humans put in when trying to manually format the file to make it look as they want it to look... they put in extra spaces or tabs or paragraph breaks.

Some people don't even realize that MS Word writes code just as a computer programmer does... it just does it behind the scenes.

If the user takes full advantage of the "what you see is what you get" feature, and formats by eye, the file may look right and even beautiful on their computer screen... but it is an illusion... underneath, the code is a mess,

It still looks good on the  monitor, because MS Word has hidden the formatting codes.

That's okay if you are just writing a letter... you don't care what the code looks like... but if you want correct code to submit to another program, you must get it right.

The first step is to make the formatting codes visible... a feature that many people do not even realize exists in MS Word.

In this lesson, I'll show you how to "Show All" formatting codes, and clean out those you don't need.

{Note to MS Word 2007 and later Ribbon Menu users, the instructions illustrated on this page below are for MS Word 2003 and earlier.
 
To reach "Show All" formatting codes from the MS Word 2007 and later, Ribbon Menu, click:
 
File | Options |Word Options | Display | Show All Formatting Marks.}
 

The screen shots below will illustrate the following steps in MS Word 2003.

 - Choose  Tools from the  Menu bar at the top of the screen, in MS Word 2003:

 - Choose Options from the Tools Menu

 - Click All in the Formatting options at the middle of the screen.

In the last screen shot, you can see paragraph marks, spaces, tabs, and page breaks.   Some are needed, others should be deleted.

Now that you can see the formatting, you can go through and delete the trash.

Choose [Tools] then [Options]

Choose [All]

Result: Show All MS Word Formatting Marks

 

Clean Up MS Word

All formatting in Microsoft Word can, and should, be done with Microsoft Word Styles, rather than manually, or “by hand” (manually pressing the space bar to create a first line indent or pressing the enter key several times to create a new page).

A file that was formatted by hand may look great on the computer screen, but it may look terrible on the Kindle.

(We show you elsewhere on this site how to replace that manual formatting with MS Word Styles)

Our next step in the creation of a beautiful Kindle eBook is to get rid of all manual formatting.

In a separate article, we told you three ways to clear out old formatting.

They are listed below, in order of their affect on an MS Doc file.

Re-Apply Default Style to The Entire File

Select your entire file with CTRL-A, then apply your default Style.

This returns all Styles to the default Style (usually Normal) leaving all "manual" or "direct" formatting untouched.

This will remove all your MS Word Styles, such as Chapter Headings.

It will NOT remove "direct" formatting, such as "bold" (which you formatted with CTRL-B) and "italics" (which you formatted with CTRL-I).

It also won't remove certain formatting that you can't see.

Don't overlook the importance of that last statement:

It also won't remove certain formatting that you can't see.

You might think if you can't see it, it can't hurt anything, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Unseen -- or "hidden" formatting -- is one of the biggest causes of poorly-formatted ebooks.

It isn't "Word bloat", as some would have you believe.   Your file may have Word bloat, but the Kindle software knows to ignore it.

Much of the danger comes from formatting that conflicts from the proper format can't be seen for one reason or another.

A typo that was corrected using the wrong font is one example.

I once had a customer file with this kind of hidden error.

The manuscript was done in Times New Roman font, but typos had been corrected in Times font.... and the different font was invisible in the manuscript.

When the ebook was published, the different fonts made the text look ugly.

Another method of cleanup is:

Clear Formatting

This method clears all formatting, including bold and italics, but does not remove pictures and page breaks.

With some Word Processors, including MS Word, a "Clear All" command is available from the Menu.

Some other Word Processors, one being Atlantis, do not have a single command to "clear all", but, instead, have two commands:

Remove Paragraph Formatting with CTRL-Q
and
Remove Character Formatting with CTRL-SPACEBAR

The third method of clean up is:

The Nuclear Option
 
Clears out ALL old formatting, including pictures and page breaks, with what Mark Coker calls the Nuclear Option.

You must make the decision as to which of the above is best for your file.

But none of those will get rid of such things as extra spaces and extra paragraph returns, and extra tabs that we put in by hand to format our document… and it won’t get rid of stray spaces, periods, and commas, that we, or an editor, left in by accident.

We will have to go through and take out all that extra stuff the same way we put it in… by hand.

Cleaning Out the Clutter

It will be easier if we can see what we are doing, so we will make the formatting marks visible, as explained below:

The Short-Cut Key for “Show All Formatting Marks is:

CTRL-SHIFT-8

If that doesn’t work for you, or you want a full explanation, go here:

MS Word Show All Formatting Marks

Now that we can see all those extra marks, we can go through and take out the extra format marks. To make this easier, set your screen view to Draft or Normal, depending on your version of Word. (Main Menu|View|Draft or Normal).

Now look closely at all those funny marks (formatting symbols) on your screen.

You will probably see a lot of extra paragraph returns, the symbol for which is [¶].

That’s what publishers call a “pilcrow”.

Here is a “pilcrow” enclosed within square brackets [¶]. 

Can you see a pilcrow on your MS Word Taskbar? That’s a switch to show or hide all these formatting marks. They still can cause problems, though, even if they are hidden from view.

For our Kindle format file, we want just one paragraph return at the end of every paragraph. Space between paragraphs should be added by the MS Word Style, not with the paragraph return.

At the very least, extra paragraph returns can make your Kindle format file look messy.

At worst, a lot of extra paragraph returns can confuse MS Word to the point that it blows up your file. (That’s for any MS Word file… it has nothing to do with the Kindle.)

It’s easy to see why we must get rid of extra paragraph returns.

Some other things are not as easy to see, but just as important.

A single space just before the beginning or end of a paragraph may not even be noticeable, but will result in those uneven first-line indents you hear people moaning about.

First line indents created with the space bar or with the tab key may be OK on your computer screen, but may not be consistent on the Kindle.

It’s better to get rid of them and add first line indents with your MS Word Style.

Random extra spaces, extra periods, or extra commas won’t blow up your file, but your Kindle text will be more beautiful if you delete them.

Here is a list of the most common offenders that you can delete with a simple search and replace.

In the list below, we will search and replace (The Word command is actually “Find and Replace”) and repeat until Word reports “0 found” or “none found”.

As an example, to get rid of extra paragraph returns, that would be:

Find All ^p^p

Replace with ^p

Then just repeat until Word returns "none" or "0" (zero)

The “Special Character” that allows you to search for a paragraph return is:

 ^p… that’s a caret (shifted 6 key) followed by a lower-case letter p. [^p]

And... that MUST be a lower-case letter p.

To find the “Special Character” that allows you to search for other items, do this:

Click CTRL-H

Click More at bottom of box

Click Special at bottom of box

Select the item you want from the “pick box”

Now, comes some human decision-making that we can’t leave to automatic Search and Replace.

I said before that you should never use manual formatting, but that isn’t true in the case of page breaks.

Sometimes you must use manual page breaks to get them right.

If yours are OK, just go to the next step… but if you have extra page breaks, resulting in blank pages, now is a good time to fix them.

The MS Word command “Clear Formatting”, which we used earlier, does not clear out “manual” page breaks, so we must take any extras out by hand.

To do that, search for Manual Page Breaks, then decide in each case if you really want a page break there, if not, leave “Replace with” blank and do a “Find Next”.

The Special Character for Manual Page Break is ^m.

So you would search for ^m, to check to see if those page breaks should be there or not… if not, just “find next” to go to the next page break.

It's also a good idea to look for "Section Breaks". They aren't needed in a Kindle file, and can cause problems. So, either delete them or replace them with page breaks, if needed.

The special code for "Section Break" is ^b (caret b).

Now, you are ready to get rid of problem-causing extra characters.

Here is a list of some of the most common offenders. 

Replace all 2 paragraph returns (^p^p) with 1 paragraph return (^p).

Repeat until Word reports "none" or "0 found”.

Continue in the same manner with “Find and Replace” each character until Word reports that it has found them all.

Replace All: two spaces one space

Replace All: space period with period

Replace All: space paragraph with paragraph

Replace All: paragraph space with paragraph

Replace All: three periods with ellipsis

Replace All: two periods with one period

Replace All: all tabs with nothing

Replace All: two commas with one comma

Replace All: space comma with comma

Replace All: comma period with period

Then, when you think it’s clean, look at your document in MS Word’s [Reading Layout]… that’s a Menu choice under [View].

You will see your document much as it will look to the end user… complete with paragraph breaks and page breaks.

When you page through the entire document, you will likely find page breaks where none are needed, and other places where they are needed but missing, and likely a lot of places where paragraph breaks are needed or missing… those will all be more obvious in this view.

I like to look at my entire file with page size set at regular page size first, because it's faster to page through fewer pages; but then I change page size to 3.5" x 5.1 inches and set the margin to .25 all around. That gives the closest possible to the Kindle pages size, for the final view.

For more, go here:
http://www.cjs-easy-as-pie.com/2013/03/steps-to-publishing-with-amazon-kindle.html

Click the photo of Birds on a Tight-Rope, to start your final steps towards publishing your manuscript to the Amazon Kindle.