Am I crazy or is outline numbering buggy?

[Anon]

Today I was trying to create a table of contents, so the online reference
told me to use the format style headers to format the document sections- ie
1.0, 2.0, 3.0 along with 1.1, 1.2, etc.

When applying these headers in the document, sometimes a section like 5.2
became 6.2, before section 6.0.

The whole MS autonumbering thing seems to be soo buggy. I know the tab and
ctrl shift tab indent/outdent thing, but I have not run across a single
person at work who is able to get this autonumbring thing done without a
whole lot of trial and error and pain and suffering.

How do I either to get it to work or to shut off? it seems to come back on
like Freddy on Friday the 13th. I think I've shut if off and then it starts
autonumbering wherever it feels so inclined.

Signed
Frustrated.

Thanks

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

The following was originally posted by fellow MVP Shauna Kelly

For information about how to set up the numbering, see:
How to create numbered headings or outline numbering in your Microsoft Word
document
http://www.ShaunaKelly.com/word/numbering/OutlineNumbering.html

If you create a template to hold your numbering scheme, you can use that
template as the basis for new documents (using File > New) and the new
documents will then inherit your numbering scheme. To do that, see:

Creating a Template - The Basics (Part I)
http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/CreateATemplatePart1.htm

Creating a Template (Part II)
http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/CreateATemplatePart2.htm


--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP

 

[Anon]

I went to the first link yesterday- the instructions were not easily
followable-I ended up with way too many styles and it seemed like I was not
making any progress converting all the fonts to arial, etc.

I went online and searched the MS templates for numbering templates and
found one I was able to reformat from Times New Roman to Arial and save it
into my templates directory as a *.dot file.

One would think after all these years that the numbering and bullet buttons
should be a bit more intuitive and within the regions follow the numbering
or bullet sequence without all the mysterious "mind of its own" behavior!

I'll give this a try to see if much of our headaches disappear..
Thanks

 

[PamC via OfficeKB.com]

When applying these headers in the document, sometimes a section like 5.2
became 6.2, before section 6.0.

This kind of error is often the result of formatting problems in the document.
Inspect the document in outline view with just the heading levels you've
used showing. You may find things like an empty paragraph assigned to a
heading level or a heading level with manual formatting that makes it look
like body text. Showing formatting marks may show line breaks when paragraph
breaks should have been used. Irecommend that you fix these things back in
page layout view.
Word's outline/multilevel list numbering is pretty stable (nonbuggy), but it
does require a coherent document structure.

PamC