Bullet point formatting problem

[Griff]

Hi

I am writing a document with many levels of heading (down to Heading 5).
When I click on an empty paragraph and then click on the Bullets icon in the
toolbar, it creates the relevant bullet point as expected.

However, the problems are that :-

a) The formatting of the bullet points is not based upon the Normal
paragraph style, it uses the same font weighting as Header 3, in this case
Arial 14 Bold.

b) All my Header 3 levels now appear as bullet points.

I've gone to Styles & Formatting and checked a few settings:
Heading2 - Based on: Normal, style for following paragraph: normal,
automatically update = false
Heading3 - Based on: Normal, style for following paragraph: normal,
automatically update = false
Normal - Based on: (no style), style for following paragraph: normal,
automatically update = false

Getting a little frustrated. Tried to delete my normal.dot, re-created with
same problem.

Any ideas?

Thanks, Griff

PS - I am using Office 2003 on XP Pro

 

[Shauna Kelly]

Hi Griff

When a document is created, it inherits the styles of its parent template.
If you didn't choose a different template, your document will be based on
the normal template (normal.dot). As far as styles are concerned, at the
moment of creation, Word severs the relationship between document and
template. So deleting normal.dot and having Word create a new one won't
affect your document at all.

For more info on that, see:
What is the relationship between a Word document and its template?
www.ShaunaKelly.com/word/attachtemplate/index.html

To get your heading numbering sorted out, follow the steps at:
How to create numbered headings or outline numbering in your Microsoft Word
document
http://www.ShaunaKelly.com/word/numbering/OutlineNumbering.html

To get your bullets sorted out, follow the steps at:
How to control bullets in Microsoft Word
http://www.ShaunaKelly.com/word/bullets/controlbullets.html

Hope this helps.

Shauna Kelly. Microsoft MVP.
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word

 

[Griff]

Shauna

The problem occurs if I close Word down (in all its incarnations, e.g.
within Outlook) and then delete the Normal.Dot file.

I then open Word which creates a document that contains the problem. On
closing the file, a Normal.Dot is generated.

Griff

 

[MDavison]

Griff - You can't open Word WITHOUT some semblance of a Normal.dot. That
template represents your blank sheet of paper. You can't ask it to start
clean with no "clean paper", see?

-Monica

 

[Griff]

Hi Monica

You sure about this? Try closing down Word, renaming your normal.dot to
normal.dot.old and open Word. I suspect that yours will open just fine and
create a new normal.dot. You can roll-back by overwriting it again with
your normal.dot.old.

Anyhow...I presumed that Word's ability to create a new normal.dot was a
piece of "defensive" coding. What would happen if the Normal.Dot file got
corrupted and it couldn't replace it? Word couldn't operate.

I suspect that whatever Word uses to re-create a normal.dot may be damaged
on my computer.

Griff

 

[Dayo Mitchell]

Word does need a Normal.dot to create a new doc, and if you delete yours, it
will recreate one on next launch. But I believe that more recent versions
don't save Normal.dot as a file that the user can find until either quit, or
maybe the first save of the doc.

Normal.dot gets corrupted all the time, deleting is a standard
troubleshooting technique. You should back it up regularly so that you can
roll back to an older one if Normal.dot get corrupted on your computer.

Monica, liked the metaphor, might copy it someday....

 

[Margaret Aldis]

Hi Griff

To return to you original problem, I think the strange bullet/style linkage
will be coming from your Format > Bullets and Numbering panes (which are
stored in the Registry, not Normal.dot). The first pane on the bullets tab
will be used by the bullets button, and if that includes a style linkage the
style will be changed to match.

Starting again with a clean document with the styles as you want them, try
resetting the panes in the B&N dialog. Better still, don't use the bullet
button but use Ctl-L to apply the List Bullet style - see Shauna's page on
this for the detail:

http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/bullets/controlbullets.html