How To Add In-Document Links In MS Word

When you paste a web link inside an MS Word document, it is automatically recognized as a hyperlink. You can choose to paste a link, or you can add a link to a word or phrase. It’s about as easy as inserting an image. You can also add in-document links that will link a user from one part of a document to another part of the same document. This is useful when you need to cross reference different sections within other sections. The bigger a document you have, the more a feature like this becomes necessary.

Add In-Document Links

In order to add in-document links, you need to first make sure you’re using the different formatting elements at your disposal. These formatting elements identify different parts of a document as headings or bodies of text. In MS Word, the links you add are added to headings or boookmarks.

Open an MS Word document. Select a heading, go to the Home tab on the ribbon and in the Styles toolbox, select a heading level.

Do this for all headings i.e. sections that you have in your document. Next, select the text you want to add a link to. Go to go to the Insert tab and select Link.

In the Insert Hyperlink window, select the ‘Place in this document’ option from the column on the left. This will populate a list of all headings in your document. Select a heading and the text you linked to will take you straight to that section.

If you don’t want to link to a section, and instead want to link to a word in the document you’re going to have to go with bookmarks. First, go to the word that you want to link to. Select it and on the Insert tab, select Bookmark. Enter the name of the bookmark, and click add.

Next, go to the where you want to add the link. Select the text that you want to add the link to. Go to the Insert tab and select Link. In the Insert Hyperlink window, select Place in this document. When the list of headings in the document populate, they will be accompanied by a list of all bookmarks you’ve added to the document. Select the bookmark you want to link to.

Navigating Links

In order to open a link, you need to hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard, and click the link. This goes for web links and in-document links. It’s to prevent accidental clicks that will open your browser or jump to a different page in the document.