How do I move chapters around in Word?

Dragging headings in the Navigation Pane

Word moves chapters by their headings, so each chapter title needs a Heading style, usually Heading 1. With that in place:

1. On the View tab, tick Navigation Pane. Pressing Ctrl+F on Windows opens it too.
2. Choose Headings at the top of the pane.
3. Collapse the subheadings if you have any, so each chapter shows as one line.
4. Drag a chapter's heading up or down the list. Everything under it, down to the next heading of the same level, travels with it.

That is the Windows version. Word for Mac has a Navigation Pane under View too, and it will jump to a heading, but it does not let you drag one. On a Mac, use Outline view instead. It works on both.

Using Outline view

Choose View → Outline. On the Outlining tab, set Show Level to Level 1, and the book collapses to its chapter titles. Now drag the small circle or plus sign beside a title, or select the title and press Alt+Shift+↑ or ↓ on Windows (Ctrl+Shift+↑ or ↓ on a Mac). A collapsed heading carries its whole chapter. The Move Up and Move Down arrows on the tab do the same thing. Choose Close Outline View when you are done.

Before a big reshuffle, save a copy of the file. Undo will reverse a move, but a copy is easier to compare against.

When chapters are missing from the pane

A chapter that does not appear was usually typed to look like a heading rather than styled as one: bold, centered, and large, but still Normal text as far as Word is concerned. Put the cursor in the title and check which style the Home tab highlights. If it is not Heading 1, click Heading 1.

To fix a whole book at once on Windows, click in one of those hand-formatted titles, choose Home → Select → Select All Text with Similar Formatting, then click Heading 1. Check the selection first, because any other line with the same size and weight is caught too. If your Mac version has no such command, style the titles one by one; ⌘+Option+1 applies Heading 1 there, and Ctrl+Alt+1 does it on Windows.

Rarer causes are worth knowing. A custom chapter style whose outline level is set to Body Text never reaches the pane; change it under Paragraph → Outline level. A title inside a text box or table will not show either.

In Tabularia

Each chapter is a row in the Outline, and you drag the row by its handle to where the chapter belongs. The prose goes with it, scenes included, on Mac and Windows alike, and the move can be undone. Chapters appear there because they carry the Chapter Heading style, which is Word's Heading 1 idea made unavoidable: a title that is not styled is not a chapter yet.

Bringing a Word book across keeps that work. A DOCX import turns each Heading 1 into a chapter and keeps lower headings inside it. Titles that were only bold will not become chapters, so apply Heading 1 in Word before you export, or restyle them after the import, as the import guide suggests.