Appendix Heading Numbering only partially functional - bug list

[Paul Brown]

Thanks Shauna and Suzanne for feedback.

Summary
-------
After performing all of the steps below, I have EXACTLY the same
faulty numbering in the sample appendix. Possibly this is due to the
fact that I did not use the same outline numbered style as the first
time.

I don't have time now, but will try making a local copy of the
document template and re-doing all of this in it, with the advantage
of the current advice.

BTW - Personally I never did see the advantage of using templates,
they are invariably on a network drive, and with network problems one
is left stranded. Also there have been so many bugs in templates that
I generally resave these back as documents on my local disk and start
a new doc by copying and renaming these.
{\Summary}


Herewith my responses ...

1. Create a template.

= current modus operandi, although I save templates as conventional
..doc files not .dot files. I want to get it to work in a standalone
doc first. Will have to re-enter the style settings I guess, although
I did read about importing styles in one of the several guides I
downloaded yesterday.

2. The only way to get Word's heading numbering to work consistently is ...
if you want to modify the numbering for Heading 6, the cursor *must* be in a
Heading 1 paragraph.

I didn't know that this was important (see below).

3. By the way, I suggest that you distinguish in your text between a
heading (a line of text, often in bold, that introduces one or more
paragraphs of text) and a header (text that appears at the top of every
page).

I didn't have it that clearly in my head, however I see that I only
got it wrong once for about 20 correct references :¬)

Have you set up the appendix heading outline numbering as detailed in
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/numbering/OutlineNumbering.html ?

I looked through these three

WordNumberingExplainedContent.htm 9,914 2004-01-21 3:14:22 PM
WordNumberingAppendixes.html 28,552 2004-01-21 3:11:12 PM
WordOutlineNumbering.html 25,047 2004-01-21 3:09:18 PM

though I must say that I didn't notice the dire warnings in them that
have just been pointed out.

"text" below are all extracts from WordOutlineNumbering.html
I am going through these instructions more carefully, recording what I
change at each step, continuing from
" 2 How to create ...
below.
This is useful for me but may also help someone else following this
thread who does not care to download and read the 25k numbering guide
above.
....
All done, now at this point I added the text at the top under
"Summary".


" 2 How to create your outline numbering
" Put your cursor in a Heading 1 paragraph.
Well I did see this, but it didn't seem applicable as my sample doc
only has Heading 6 to Heading 9 headings, as it is a sample appendix.

OK - I have inserted a dummy Heading 1. When I go
[Format [Style [Modify [Format [Numbering {1 1.1 1.1.1 [Customize

I see that Headings 1-5 look like A, A.1 ... A.1.1.1.1.
I changed [Level 1] [Number Format] back to 1, and Headings 1-5 came
right (and 6-9 remained A ... A.1.1.1).


" Click the Outline Numbered Tab. Choose a pre-set numbering option
that is similar
" to what you want. Choose this and promise yourself now that, no
matter what, you
" will never choose any of the other options here. Always choose the
box that is
" already highlighted.
Can't say that I didn't contravene this. Will stick to first on the
left on top row from now on.

" For a really clean professional job, go through each of the pre-set
schemes on the
" Outline Numbered tab and click Reset. This will flush out any
nasties left over
" from previous unsuccessful efforts to tame Word's numbering.
Done.

" Click More. Give your numbering scheme a name
OK - I'll see if this helps.
I gave it the name
AppendixList
but I don't see it occur anywhere apart from the style editing box -
certainly not in the list of styles.

" Tick the box that says Restart Numbering After, and ensure it's set
to the correct
" level.
Level 6 - took off restart numbering after Level 5


" 3.1 How to change the font or paragraph format of your headings
" In the future, when you want to change anything about your heading
levels, modify
" the style, not the individual paragraph. If you want Heading 2, for
example, to be
" green and not bold, go to a Heading 2 paragraph and modify the
style.
Doesn't this contradict the advice to enter style modifications on
Heading 1 only.
This is reinforced by such a statement in 3.2 immediately below.


" In your document, choose Tools > Templates and Add-Ins. Make sure
that
" "Automatically Update Document Styles" is not ticked. Why? Because
if you leave it
" on, you risk upsetting your numbering.
Done.


" (And remember your promise to use the same pre-set position every
time. If you
" don't, hell will rain upon you, your dog won't love you any more,
and your
" numbering is likely to go ballistic.)
Close - my numbering did a Beagle 2 on me, and it's raining cats and
dogs, as it has for the whole week.

 

[Margaret Aldis]

Thanks Shauna and Suzanne for feedback.

Summary
-------
After performing all of the steps below, I have EXACTLY the same
faulty numbering in the sample appendix. Possibly this is due to the
fact that I did not use the same outline numbered style as the first
time.

Have you tried Ctrl-Q to reset the paragraphs to style? A common problem
with numbering is getting the 'list format' applied as direct formatting,
instead of coming from the style. This will *always* occur if you restart
numbering or continue numbering (let alone those old documents where the
numbering has been 'corrected' several times!)
..

BTW - Personally I never did see the advantage of using templates,
they are invariably on a network drive, and with network problems one
is left stranded. Also there have been so many bugs in templates that
I generally resave these back as documents on my local disk and start
a new doc by copying and renaming these.

Many people prefer the set up where copies of corporate templates are held
in a known location on everyone's local drive. A login script or similar can
be used to push updates when required. Otherwise everyone actually works
around by making local copies, with the result that promulgating changes and
bug fixes becomes impossible to control.

BTW you have a huge number of groups on this thread, including
microsoft.word.general which is officially dead - do you want to reduce
follow-up to one or two you are reading?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

To follow up on Margaret's suggestion, I would guess that you would get
pretty much the same level of response if you posted only in
microsoft.public.word.numbering. I'm seeing the posts in m.p.w.pagelayout
but only because I get there before .numbering. And this thread is
definitely not appropriate for .newusers.

 

[Bruce Brown]

Hi, Paul

Strikes me that there's good news and bad news.

The good news is that if you carefully follow the instructions on
Shauna's website and others posted here by Suzanne and Margaret, your
appendix numbering will come out perfectly. In other words, what you
need is quite doable, you just haven't clicked the right combination
yet to open the safe.

The bad news is that it's extremely difficult to follow your problems
and see what you're not doing right (for me, at least). What you're
trying to do with "dummy sections," for example, completely throws me.

So let me point out a few fundamentals here to support what Shauna,
Suzanne and Margaret have already told you - back to basics, so to
speak. Maybe they'll help, maybe they won't.

* First, in addition to Shauna's website on appendix numbering, also
check out Andrew Gabb's "Using Word 97 for Complex Documents" at

http://[email protected]/

It covers in great detail the problems you're having.

* Also see Jonathan West's article "Distributing Macros to other
users" on the MVP site at

http://word.mvps.org/faqs/macrosvba/DistributeMacros.htm

It covers what Margaret was telling you about setting up copies of
templates on the local C:\ drive with a login script.

* It's slightly easier to use the built-in Heading styles 6-9 for
appendix numbering than to create a separate set of outline-numbered
styles linked to its own list template. However, it's not really
*that much* easier. Andrew Gabb's article explains how you can get
away with doing pagination and TOC references for appendices without
the built-in Heading styles.

* Sections and "dummy sections" are irrelevant to the appendix
numbering. If Heading 6 is your first level appendix numbering style,
it's the Heading 6 that determines the number, not the section. You
should put a next page section break before each appendix, of course,
but that's not what governs the numbering.

* When you create Headings 7 - 9, it's like creating Headings 2 - 4,
where the first, second, and third numbers are repeats of the last
previous levels. To create a Heading 2, for example, that reads A.1,
you would use the A in previous level 1, then a 1,2,3 number style for
Heading 2.

Ditto for Headings 7 - 9. For Heading 7, you use the A in previous
level 6, then a 1,2,3 numbering style for Headings 7, etc., etc.

* Your Heading styles - or your own outline-numbered styles, if you
create them instead - must all be properly linked to a list template
and edited with your cursor on a level 1 paragraph, as stressed by
Shauna. Unless each and every one of these outline-numbered styles is
properly linked to the same list template, you have broken numbering.
There shouldn't be any missing links between the first and last levels
you are using.

* In the bottom box of the Customize Outline Numbered List (Listnum
field list name) it helps to type in a name for future use with
LISTNUM fields or with VBA code. Optional, but why not? It's free.

* For your table(s) of contents, it makes good sense to generate one
TOC for the main body of the document and another for the appendices.
For the main body TOC, if there were two levels of numbering to be
included you could use:

{ TOC \h \t "Heading 1,1,Heading2,2" }

For the separate appendix TOC, you could get four levels of appendix
numbering like so:

{ TOC \h \t "Heading 6,1,Heading 7,2,Heading 8,3,Heading 9,4" }

If you absolutely had to put both TOCs together it could be done like
this:

{ TOC \h \t "Heading 1,1,Heading 1,2,Heading 6,1,Heading
7,2,Heading 8,3,Heading 9,4" }

To capture field entries as well, if there are any, just add \f
somewhere in the field:

{ TOC \h \f \t "Heading 1,1,Heading2,2" }

Hope you'll find some little detail here that you may have overlooked
and everything'll snap into place. - Bruce