Fields won't lock.

[Peter A]

I am having a strange problem. My document uses automatic numbering for
heading levels and for captions. I want to lock these numbers - convert
the fields to plain text - so, as I have done many times before I select
the entire document and press Ctrl+Shift+F9. The fields remain fields,
they are not converted to text. I have tried selecting individual fields
with the same result. What on earth (or off) is going on?

Word 2003.

Thanks,

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Although autonumbering undoubtedly uses fields, they aren't displayed as
such and don't respond to the usual field actions. The caption numbers
(which are SEQ fields) should respond, but not the paragraph numbers. For
that you need a macro (provided by Stefan Blom):

To convert autonumbering (paragraph/outline numbering and LISTNUM
fields) to plain text, do the following: Make sure the active
document is the one you want to convert. Then press ALT+F11 to
display the Visual Basic Editor. On the View menu, click
Immediate Window. In the Immediate Window, type

ActiveDocument.ConvertNumbersToText

and press ENTER.

Note that if paragraph/outline numbering was applied with styles,
it isn't completely gone (CTRL+Q will bring it back!) unless you
also clear it from the style definitions.

 

[DeanH]

I have found that using Unformatted Text paste of the auto-numbered paragraph
will give you a plain text version of the number. When ever I need to convert
the auto-numbering to plain text I do a series of Replace based on the
numbering style, etc.
Hope this helps
DeanH

 

[DeanH]

That is to say, I run the style replace (to a style without numbering) AFTER
running Stefan's neat little macro.