Backspace randomly starts deleting bullets...

[RGrunwald]

I write a lot of lecture outlines in MS Word using bullets. It works
extremely well, however, the funniest thing happens and I'd love to be able
to stop it.

Everything will work great for a time:

When I press tab, the bullet will indent one tab forward.
When I press backspace, the bullet will de-indent one tab backward.

.... then, all of the sudden, without any purposeful doing on my part:

When I press tab, the bullet will indent one tab forward.
However, when I press backspace, it deletes the bullet.

.... and this continues for the rest of the document and I can't seem to
resolve it (i.e. get it to go back to de-indenting my bullet instead of
deleting it when I press back space).

If anybody could offer up any solution to this, it would mean a great deal.

Thank you kindly.

 

[Stefan Blom]

Make sure that the "Set left and first indent with tabs and backspaces" option
is selected in the AutoCorrect dialog box.

To display the dialog, click Office button | Word Options. In the Proofing
category, click the AutoCorrect Options button. You'll find the option on the
AutoFormat As You Type tab.

 

[RGrunwald]

Stefan,

First off, thank you so much for responding.

The set left indent... option was clicked... and that makes sense, since it
NORMALLY lets me move back an indent when I hit backspace... but just now,
for instance, it started deleted the bullets when I hit backspace... and I
can't seem to get it to stop, no matter what I do... I need to manually hit
the back-indent button to get it to move back. Tab still works to move the
bullet forward-indent, though.

Do you have any ideas here? Thank you so much again
--
Robert Grunwald, MD, PhD
Department of Neurological Oncology
David Geffen School of Medicine
University of California, Los Angeles

 

[Stefan Blom]

After some testing I've concluded that the behavior of the BackSpace key is
slightly different depending on how you created the multilevel list. If you
created it by clicking the Bullet button, backspacing deletes the bullet; on the
other hand, if you created it as a multilevel list (of bullets), backspacing
"outdents" the list.

Use Tab and Shift+Tab instead; those commands behave the same no matter how you
created the multilevel list.

 

[RGrunwald]

This is huge, than you so much.
--
Robert Grunwald, MD, PhD
Department of Neurological Oncology
David Geffen School of Medicine
University of California, Los Angeles

 

[Stefan Blom]

You are welcome.