Help --- Merging separately numbered chapters into one book...

[zenon]

I've just finished a draft of a book. Each chapter is nicely organized
with numbered headings (down to level 3) and with the proper Header 1
chapter headings. I did this the way I always did it -- the way I
learned from MVP Shawna Kelly. Now I need to get the separate chapters
into one file for various reasons (e.g., so that Endnote can get all the
references into one bibliography and so that footnotes can be properly
numbered). So I innocently concatenated all the chapters into one file
and all hell broke loose in the numbering. It started off with my being
unable to get level 2 to restart after each Level 1 chapter heading.
And each remedy I tried made things worse -- either every header started
with 2 (or "Chapter 2") or the header numbers turned into letters or
long numbers without the dots, or ... everything but what I needed. Why
can't I keep my individual chapter numbers when I concatenate them? Or,
I should say; What do I need to do to keep my hard-won section numbering
intact and still merge the chapters.
- Zenon

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Zenon:

"All hell" has not broken loose, it just looks like it has...

You have missed one tiny step in Shauna's instructions. You have not
associated the List Template with your Styles in your main document (you may
have done this in the individual files, you may have done it in the
template, but you haven't done it in the main document.

This is just one of the REALLY STUPID design bugs in Microsoft Word is that
the list number formats associated with styles do not hold their correct
association when the text is copied or moved between documents. This is
what happens when you write the specifications in American and then send the
coding out to the lowest bidder to throw together: a misunderstanding occurs
that has driven us crazy for years. We can't get it fixed because the
executives who sign the cheques never use Word for long and complex
documents, so they cannot understand the disaster they have created.

The reason that the problem seems to be "growing" is that you are fiddling
around at the edges trying to "correct" the effects of the problem. You
need to be brave and charge into the middle and "fix" the problem

The condition you are in, is that your Heading 2's are not members of the
same list as your heading 1's. Easy to do, and easy to correct. It doesn't
even matter when the text is in individual files: when you combine them, you
see the problem.

Generally you can fix this by search/replacing Heading 2 to Heading 2 (make
sure the Find What and Replace With boxes really are "blank").

Or, if you know where to find it on the Task Pane, you can select 1 Heading
2 then "Select all instances". Then simply "Apply" Heading 2 (make sure you
are applying the 'real' Heading 2, not the various off-shoots that can occur
if unskilled users have been playing with the document.

Re-applying Heading 2 will re-associate all the heading 2 paragraphs with
the correct list (assuming that you have followed the rest of Shauna's
instructions exactly). Your problem will instantly be solved.

If this does not fix the document, you have manually applied numbering over
the top of the style. If you have done this, you will need to laboriously
remove the manual formatting from each Heading 2 paragraph so that the style
formatting can work.

Find each Heading 2 in the document and hit Ctrl + Space Bar to remove the
direct character formatting, then Ctrl + q to remove any direct paragraph
formatting (numbering is counted as paragraph formatting). When you do, if
your style is correct, the paragraph will instantly come right.

Hope this helps

I've just finished a draft of a book. Each chapter is nicely organized
with numbered headings (down to level 3) and with the proper Header 1
chapter headings. I did this the way I always did it -- the way I
learned from MVP Shawna Kelly. Now I need to get the separate chapters
into one file for various reasons (e.g., so that Endnote can get all the
references into one bibliography and so that footnotes can be properly
numbered). So I innocently concatenated all the chapters into one file
and all hell broke loose in the numbering. It started off with my being
unable to get level 2 to restart after each Level 1 chapter heading.
And each remedy I tried made things worse -- either every header started
with 2 (or "Chapter 2") or the header numbers turned into letters or
long numbers without the dots, or ... everything but what I needed. Why
can't I keep my individual chapter numbers when I concatenate them? Or,
I should say; What do I need to do to keep my hard-won section numbering
intact and still merge the chapters.
- Zenon

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[zenon]

John,

Thanks very much for taking the time to write out the suggestions. I
have been spending some time each day trying to make your suggestions
work, but so far have not had any success. Since the chapters were
written at various times and on different machines over the past years
the formating might be different in each (and I certainly had to
manually set the heading 1 numbers so that part could be problematic).
There are at least 6 "heading 1" formats in the template file and many
things look different depending on which heading 1 (or 2) I look at in
the task menu. Sometimes its name is "heading 1" and it is based on
"style heading 1" and sometimes vice versa.

Here is what I have tried.

Re: "You have not associated the List Template with your Styles in your
main document"

I'm afraid I don't know how to "associate a list template". I did try
to replace all Heading 2 with a new heading 2 as you suggested. Nothing
came of that. I did the select all instances and applied heading 2, but
nothing changed.

What I have been doing now is trying to recreate the mast file by going
through each chapter before copying into the main file (by copy+paste),
picking out a heading 1, going into modify style and trying to make them
identical. Then I copy it into the combined document one chapter at a
time and go through all the headings using the task pane and customize
numbering. I go through the headings in order starting with #1 (as per
Shauna method). In some cases I can't tell it to "link level" to
heading 1 or 2 and sometimes when I do tell it to link when I come back
it is no longer linked. Many things seem to be random. For example
each time I see the "Outline numbering" tab is has different options in
it. If I find one that is like what I want (including the right heading
numbers) it often works, but I don't know how to get it to display the
right ones -- it certainly does not help to change the "starting number'
because that creates global changes.

But anyway I have gone through 5 chapters and it seems to be working
although I have no idea which of the random things I did made a difference.

Thanks anyway for your help, it is appreciated. I have the impression
that numbering is one of the most deeply mis-designed parts of Word.

Zenon

 

[Margaret Aldis]

This will come right if you keep your nerve and work in the right order - it
really boils down to just 2 steps.

Step 1- in the combined document, set up the Heading styles correctly - as a
single hierarchy, following Shauna's method. Ignore all those other panes
with Heading 1 in them, or reset them if it feels less confusing.

Now the styles are right, but the actual paragraphs won't be, because for a
variety of reasons (some "your fault" for the way this has been built up in
bits, and some Word's) most will have their numbering coming from "direct
formatting"). So for Step 2 you just have to find the simplest way(s) of
reapplying the numbered styles or of resetting the paragraph formatting
(Ctrl-Q) - either of these will override direct numbering formatting with
correct numbering coming from the style.

For heading styles, probably the quickest way of doing this to use the
Outline view showing 3 or 4 levels (whatever depth your headings go to) and
then just run through using Ctrl-Q.

Another trick (which works for other styles) is to use the Styles and
Formatting pane. Turn on the "Keep track of formatting" Edit Option, and
select "Formatting in use" from the Pane dropdown. You can then pick off the
various (mis)-formatted headings etc., by using "select all instances" from
the right click menu and applying the style in question.

Or you can replace Heading 1 with Heading 1, Heading 2 with Heading 2 and so
on using Find and Replace (putting a paragraph mark (^p) in both find and
replace boxes is possibly the cleanest and most certain way of doing this -
some older versions of Word at least may not do the replace on "nothing").

Whichever method you use, be sure to reset *all* your headings, not just
those that look wrong at the moment, and don't be tempted to try to fix
anything manually for an individual heading or individual heading level
style - you must get the style hierarchy right first, then use the styles to
get the numbering right.

 

[zenon]

Thanks again folks. I have spent the last 12 hrs on this and have
managed to get the first 4 chapters into the same file. But adding the
fifth causes all the previous ones to turn to 5s with subheaders having
letters instead of numbers. Or if I try to work on that it gets even
worse.

I have been going through systematically. I even removed all formatting
and started from scratch. But there seem to be remnants of the old
formatting. For example, in the first window I get when I try to modify
the header formats, there are two windows I don't understand: One says:
"Name" and the other says "Style based on". In the chapters that worked
before, the name was "Style Header x" with X being 1 or 2 or 3 or 4.
But in the last chapter I tried to insert it will not let me put that.
If I type in "style heading 2" it comes back with "header 2, style
header 2". Then if I try to insert "Header 2" in the "based on" box it
says I have a circular "based on", so I end up putting "No style" in the
based on box. In most cases there is not even a "header 2" available
when I need to insert that -- it just is not on the list of possible
styles. All there is is the strange style "header 2, style header 2"
and sometimes even "style style header 2, header 2". That can't be
right but nothing else seems possible. And so it goes -- I am thwarted
at every turn. For example I tried to set up the 4th level heading to
be just a line with numbers (1), (2) and so on since the sections 4's
are short. I set that up and I can see it on the task pane -- both the
one beside the Word document and the one I get when I am trying to
modify the numbering,, but no matter what I do the numbers do not appear
in the document unless I forsake the header levels and work directly
with the Formatter, which I know is wrong but 2 hrs of doing this over
and over and I could not get it to show the numbers in parentheses.

I have to add that I *am* patient and also I am an engineer used to
diagnosing and solving technical problems, and also I have been working
with Word for many years, but this numbering maze has beat me!

 

[Margaret Aldis]

It sounds like you have inadvertently been making new styles rather than
using the built-in styles. If you have "Keep track of formatting" on (which
you probably should for this job) and you happen to click "Modify" against
one of the style + direct formatting entries, Word offers a new style which
by default is called Style <real style name> + <direct formatting>. Click OK
and a weird style is born.

So if you do this several times you will build up Style Style ...

The "based on" box is telling you what style this new style is based on -
the narrative below will indicate which formatting is being inherited from
that style and where it differs (see Shauna on cascading styles). When you
have several names separated by commas, you are seeing "aliases" or multiple
names for the same style.

None of this changes the recommended method, though.

First, make sure your *real* Heading n (*not* Header) styles are set up with
the correct hierarchical numbering - go back to Shauna Kelly's instructions
for this. Don't try to modify or correct any of the weird styles at all -
you will make things worse. If you have given some of your heading styles
aliases, you might want to remove them.

To deal with the weird styles, in your Styles and Formatting pane use the
dropdown menu carefully to select the instances, and then again *apply* the
correct style. Start with the Headings themselves, then work away at
anything that looks approximately like a Heading (Style Heading 2, or
whatever). Gradually all the weird styles will disappear, leaving you only
Headings, correctly formatted.

If you are bringing in the chapters one by one, you might find it easier to
restyle your headings in the source documents with some temporary,
unnumbered, styles (say tempHead1, tempHead2 etc.) - then when you import do
the select instances trick to apply the real Heading styles. That way you
won't be bringing in confusing numbering formats and style linkages.

So specifically for your 4th level problem, the key things to remember are:

* Don't modify Heading 4 directly - do it via the Heading 1 style, Numbering
format, so the whole hierarchy is kept intact.
* Make sure the 4th level of the numbering is linked to Heading 4 style (and
all the other levels are linked to their Heading styles correctly too)
* Apply the numbering by applying Heading 4 - don't touch Format > Bullets
and Numbering
* Don't subsequently modify indents or tabs on Heading 4 - the indent and
first tab needs to come from the numbering.

Yes it is a maze, but hope this gives you some direction.

 

[zenon]

Thanks for your help and encouragement. I managed to get the combined
file to be numbered correctly by breaking one of the Seven Rules -- the
only way I could get rid of the strange formats is by going to the
earlier parts of the book and painting those styles into the newer ones
using the style painter (I brought the chapters in one by one so the
earlier ones were okay and the later ones were messed). Now I remember
that this is the only way I got things to work in my previous book.

But now I can't go back of course. I can't have separate chapters and a
whole book in which I can move chapter versions in and out. Maybe I
will forget about doing that or maybe I will try your instructions on
individual chapters to see how that works. It would be nice to
understand how these things work as this will not be my last book and
the problems are all so deja vu.

Zenon

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Zenon:

Ah hah! That confirms mine and Margaret's suspicion You are not
dealing with the "Real" heading styles. Your document is full of "fake"
styles (which the format painter is quite happy to paste).

Because you have been working on this text for a long time, you have very
complex styles based on styles based on styles happening, making it really
difficult to get anything to work.

Let's try something just out of interest:

1) Make a copy of your document and save under a new name (so we can play
around without breaking anything...)

2) Set your task pane to show All Styles

3) Run through every style in the task pane and find every one that has
"Heading 1" in its name.

4) Delete it!

The only one you won't be able to delete is the real one

When you do this, any paragraph with anything but the real Heading 1 style
on it will revert to Normal style. Run through and apply the real Heading 1
style to them.

Do this for headings 2, 3, 4 etc.

That will enable you to regain control of the document.

Let us know what happens next

Cheers

Thanks for your help and encouragement. I managed to get the combined
file to be numbered correctly by breaking one of the Seven Rules -- the
only way I could get rid of the strange formats is by going to the
earlier parts of the book and painting those styles into the newer ones
using the style painter (I brought the chapters in one by one so the
earlier ones were okay and the later ones were messed). Now I remember
that this is the only way I got things to work in my previous book.

But now I can't go back of course. I can't have separate chapters and a
whole book in which I can move chapter versions in and out. Maybe I
will forget about doing that or maybe I will try your instructions on
individual chapters to see how that works. It would be nice to
understand how these things work as this will not be my last book and
the problems are all so deja vu.

Zenon

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[zenon]

Hi John,

I did the deletes, although there were fewer deletable styles than I
expected. There is no pure heading 1 or heading 2 style in the "all
styles" list, only modified ones "heading 1,style heading 1... and
"heading 2, Style heading 2..." which cannot be deleted (they must have
gotten saved in my normal.dot file -- maybe I need to copy over a fresh
normal.dot file?). But I deleted all the headings that allowed
deletion. The formatting now looks much as it did before although there
are a few messes. Going through each (heading 1 through heading 4) did
not help and in a couple cases generated new misnumberings. As always I
was able to repair the numbering by using format painter -- which has
saved me many times! Now I am back with "style heading 1, style heading
1, ..." but at least the numbering is correct. What's wrong with format
painting, it's about the only thing I can count on anymore?

Zenon

 

[zenon]

Thanks John,

I turned off "Keep track of formatting" and modified all headings so
they are just "Heading n" (rather than "Style heading n, style ...".
Everything seems to be working, so I'm on my way. If I start off with
the pure headings I should be able to keep things right on any new
chapter I add in by format pasting from the old headings, right?

I appreciate the help I get from MVPs.

Zenon