Bulleted List Format Problems Going From Word97 to Word2000

[Steve Sr.]

I am having difficulty with the formatting of bulleted lists when I
open a document in Word 2000 that was originally created in Word97.

The symptoms are that some of the bulleted items has the text indents
and spacing screwed up while others look fine.

If I go into the paragraph formatting and bullet formatting everything
looks the same between the correct and incorrect bullet items. The
incorrect ones just don't display or print properly.

Can anyone offer any suggestions on how to fix this or troubleshoot
this further? Is this a known issue when converting from 97 to 2000?

I have also noticed that the formatting is "funky" for new bulleted
lists. The text doesn't line up from line to line in bullet items that
take more than one line. This didn't used to happen in Word 97.

Thanks,

Steve

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi Steve,

I am having difficulty with the formatting of bulleted lists when I
open a document in Word 2000 that was originally created in Word97.

The symptoms are that some of the bulleted items has the text indents
and spacing screwed up while others look fine.

If I go into the paragraph formatting and bullet formatting everything
looks the same between the correct and incorrect bullet items. The
incorrect ones just don't display or print properly.

Can anyone offer any suggestions on how to fix this or troubleshoot
this further? Is this a known issue when converting from 97 to 2000?

Pretty much, yes. A new numbering tool was introduced in word 97, and it
wasn't working very well (it still isn't). It was changed for Word 2000
in an attempt to make it more stable, so moving Word 97 documents with
numbering to newer versions is often problematic.

I have also noticed that the formatting is "funky" for new bulleted
lists. The text doesn't line up from line to line in bullet items that
take more than one line. This didn't used to happen in Word 97.

Are you creating these documents from a template that's come forward
from an earlier version of Word? If you rename Normal.dot to
NormalOLD.dot, start up Word and create some bullets in this new
document is the result better than what you're seeing now?

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Sep 30 2003)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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[Steve Sr.]

Cindy,

Thanks fo your response. Please see comments below-

Hi Steve,

Pretty much, yes. A new numbering tool was introduced in word 97, and it
wasn't working very well (it still isn't). It was changed for Word 2000
in an attempt to make it more stable, so moving Word 97 documents with
numbering to newer versions is often problematic.

Thanks for corroborating this. I finally used the "shotgun" approach
to "fix" this particular instance. I simply found bulleted items that
were displaying correctly and copied the paragraph marker at the end
of the item. I then used this marker to replace the one on the
defective items and the item now displays properly. Go figure.

This is really a pain since this document was my resume! What looks
perfect on my system might look nasty on a recepient's computer
depending on which version of word the person is using.

Are you creating these documents from a template that's come forward
from an earlier version of Word? If you rename Normal.dot to
NormalOLD.dot, start up Word and create some bullets in this new
document is the result better than what you're seeing now?

I didn't being any templates over to the new machine so Word was
working with the new "normal.dot" This seems to be different in the
new version as well.

The new version uses a "tab" to determine the indent of the first line
of a bulleted item while remaining lines use the "indent" setting on
the ruler bar. The interesting thing about this is that default indent
and tab locations are in different places! You can fix this by either
removing the tab in which case the first line now follows the ruler
indent setting. You can also move the tab location to coincide with
the indent position. I don't understand why you would need to use a
"tab" here anyway.

Regards,

Steve