bullets and numbered lists apply to ALL styles

[Mark at Icom]

Sometimes, when I apply a bullet or numbered list to a style, it applies it
to all the styles in my doc and creates a new, numbered style. Then I click
undo and it unconverts the other styles and applies the bullet or numbering
to only my original selection. When this occurs, my file size often grows, as
if it is saving every single change, including the one that I had to undo.

This is extremely annoying and I have had a 1k file balloon to 200M! What is
happening, and is there a better way to create bulleted and numbered lists?

 

[Stefan Blom]

Are the affected styles based on the style you are changing? That
would explain why they get the same formatting. You can clear the
bullet (or numbering) formatting from the style definitions.

Alternatively, an easier solution would be to use a numbered
(bulleted) style that is not the "parent" of other styles. You can use
the built-in List Bullet and List Number styles for this purpose.

If you are adding bullet or numbering formatting as direct formatting
(via Format>Bullets and Numbering) automatic updating of styles could
be the problem. Please see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/WholeDocumentReformatted.htm.
Style hierarchy could be an issue here, too.

I don't know how/why this affects file size, though.

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Sometimes, when I apply a bullet or numbered list to a style, it applies it
to all the styles in my doc and creates a new, numbered style. Then I click
undo and it unconverts the other styles and applies the bullet or numbering
to only my original selection. When this occurs, my file size often grows, as
if it is saving every single change, including the one that I had to undo.

This is extremely annoying and I have had a 1k file balloon to 200M! What is
happening, and is there a better way to create bulleted and numbered

lists?

 

[mark at icom]

Stefan:
Thank you very much! The article in the link cleared my problem, I thought
that automatically update meant updating only for that instance (such as when
I would modify a style myself), I had no idea that anything else I did would
affect everything. I have always used the philosophy of "don't mess with
normal" and "base everything on normal", so now the problem makes sense.
Since my docs get imported to other applications, I have tried to keep them
simple stylistically.

No one is this company knows much about Word, and I am a jaded FrameMaker
user. I will spread this info around.

Mark

 

[Stefan Blom]

I'm glad I could help.