Turn Off Formatting Display in Outline View
The Problem:
I use Outline view all the time for taking notes in classes and meetings. The problem is that the formatting constantly changes when I tab in or outif I tab in, I have to press Ctrl+I immediately to turn off italics. I just want the formatting to stay the same, but I can't find any way to make that happen.
The Solution:
When you're tabbing in and out, you're changing the heading level, right? So what's happening is that Word is applying the different built-in heading styles. In the default Normal.dot template, the Heading 2, Heading 5, and Heading 8 styles use italic, so when you hit one of those levels, you'll get italics.
The easiest fix is to ignore the problem. Click the Show Formatting button on the Outlining toolbar to turn off the display of formatting. All your text will now appear in your default font, without any italics (unless your default font is italic).
If you don't want to lose all the font formatting in Outline view, change the Heading styles from italic to regular font. Bear in mind, though, that this change carries through in all views.