How can I safely put "outline numbered" bullet styles back togethe

[Barbara]

scrupulously followed Shauna Kelly's excellent instructions
(http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/bullets/controlbullets.html) to create
paragraph styles List Bullet 1 through List Bullet 5, including the part
about choosing the far upper right position in the list gallery for the
setup. Everything was fine for months. But no more.

I am using Word 2000. These styles are part of a workgroup template. I am in
charge of this template. I can get special dispensation from my corporation
to install Word 2003. I am working on the paperwork for that now.

Last week I opened a document that uses this template, only to discover that
every paragraph tagged with one of the List Bullet styles was now
sequentially numbered. (The documents are set to automatically update their
styles from the template. I am aware of the dangers. But in this situation it
is the right thing to do.) Another
document retained the phantom tabs and the appropriate indents but had no
bullet characters. A document opened in Word 2003 had bullet characters, but
every paragraph with a List Bullet style was indented 2 inches instead of 0,
0.25, 0.5, etc.

If I click one of these bulleted paragraphs and choose Format > Bullets and
Numbering, I see that the selected gallery position is now the lower left
instead of the upper left.

Clearly I need to repair the template.

Here are my questions.
1. Will these styles be more stable if I use Word 2003 instead of Word 2000
to define them?
2. Do I need to recreate the template from scratch, or can I start with a
version that has no autonumbered styles in it and rebuild those styles?
3. I suspect that the cause of this corruption was a document based on this
template in which a colleague had clicked the bullet icon instead of
assigning a List Bullet style. (Well, really the cause was Microsoft's code,
but I have no control over that.) What do I need to do with that document (or
with its content) to make sure that it can never again affect the List Bullet
styles?
4. What do I need to do with the other documents that use this template?
Will it be enough to open them and save them with the recreated template?

Thanks!

 

[Stefan Blom]

Are paragraph styles being applied to text, by all users, whenever a number
format is required? That is essential for numbering stability (especially in
a complex document). Note that you can reset the paragraph formatting of
selected paragraphs by pressing Ctrl+Q. Does this fix anything at all?

If you suspect document and/or template corruption, see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/CorruptDoc.htm.

 

[Barbara]

I am pretty sure that at least one user did not apply paragraph styles
appropriately. Your reply here gives me the courage to crack the whip about
this.

Ctrl + Q does not help. This leads me to believe that the style definition
in the template is in trouble.

I have now read the document about fixing corrupt docs and templates. It
mentions running the VBA Code Cleaner. I suspect it will be a waste of time
to find out enough about this to do it. The template does contain four
macros, but they are very simple, and I have not edited them for months. The
document about running the VBA Code Cleaner tells me to "export and remove
all the modules from the template." I don't know what that means. Do you
think that this step is really needed in this case?

I am now ready to bite the bullets and recreate the template from scratch. I
will follow the suggestion in the "corrupt template" discussion about getting
a virgin copy of Normal.dot as my starting point.

After I've done this, what do I need to do with the documents based on this
template? I am pretty sure I know which document started the bullet problems.
Do I need to treat that document as corrupt? I am seeing bullet problems in
documents that I know used the styles correctly. Will they be OK once
attached to the clean template?

Thanks!

 

[Stefan Blom]

in message

I am pretty sure that at least one user did not apply paragraph styles
appropriately. Your reply here gives me the courage to crack the whip
about
this.

Ctrl + Q does not help. This leads me to believe that the style definition
in the template is in trouble.

I have now read the document about fixing corrupt docs and templates. It
mentions running the VBA Code Cleaner. I suspect it will be a waste of
time
to find out enough about this to do it. The template does contain four
macros, but they are very simple, and I have not edited them for months.
The
document about running the VBA Code Cleaner tells me to "export and remove
all the modules from the template." I don't know what that means. Do you
think that this step is really needed in this case?

I'm not sure how the Code Cleaner works; if there are no error messages
referring to macros/VBA, I don't think you need it.

However, it is a good idea to keep a backup of the macros used. Press
Alt+F11 to display the Visual Basic Editor. Locate the module where the
macros are stored (by default, the names of modules are Module1, Module2,
etc.). Right-click it and choose Export File from the context menu. This
saves the macros in a separate file which you can then import into your
recreated template.

I am now ready to bite the bullets and recreate the template from scratch.
I
will follow the suggestion in the "corrupt template" discussion about
getting
a virgin copy of Normal.dot as my starting point.

After I've done this, what do I need to do with the documents based on
this
template? I am pretty sure I know which document started the bullet
problems.
Do I need to treat that document as corrupt? I am seeing bullet problems
in
documents that I know used the styles correctly. Will they be OK once
attached to the clean template?

If a document is corrupt, attaching a working template to it is unlikely to
fix the corruption; instead, you will have to clean the document separately.

Also, note that a document is unlikely to cause bullet problems in other
documents, unless the "other" documents were created via Save As, as opposed
to creating them from the template.

See also the response(s) to your thread in the
microsoft.public.word.numbering newsgroup.

 

[Barbara]

Thanks very much for your help, Stefan! I'm now back in business.

 

[Stefan Blom]

You are welcome.

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP


in message