Numbering bug in new Office 2001 update?

[Stan The Man]

I have a problem which originates from the day that I installed the
latest Office 2001 MacOs9 updater. The last column of a 470-row table
is set to auto-number and the numbers show up correctly initially but
after adding some data to the table, the numbers go haywire. Either the
first 20 or so cells are all numbered zero or I will find groups of
rows throughout the table with blank spaces where numbers should be and
the numbering sequence excludes these 'blanks'.

I know it's a big table, but I have been using the same table for
almost 10 years and have never seen this problem before. Any clues or
corroboration? TIA.

Stan

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Stan:

That's not a "new" bug in Word's numbering It's a very old "feature"
It has nothing much to do with any service packs.

Numbering behaves like a hidden style. Actually, it "is" a hidden style.

What has happened is that "some" of the cells in your table belong to one
list of numbers, and some belong to a different list. In Word 2004, you
would be able to use the new selection command to show which cells belong to
which list.

But it does not really matter: the cure is the same. Select all of the
cells and re-apply the style. If you are not using a style, re-apply the
numbering.

Frankly, I am amazed that a table has lasted "almost 10 years" without you
getting the problem.

I could go on and on with a deeply technical explanation: write back if you
want it. In the meantime, you may wish to re-construct that table, so it
lasts another ten years.

To do so, select the whole table and use Table>Convert>Table to text. Then,
without moving your selection, choose Table>Convert>Text to Table. That
rebuilds the whole table structure. You will then need to re-apply the
numbering and other formatting. When you have done, it will be good as new.

Tables are a very complicated "special case" of paragraph. You must be an
expert workman with Word for your table to last as long as it has: neat
precise editing is one of the essential secrets to getting a table to last
more than a few edits

Hope this helps

I have a problem which originates from the day that I installed the
latest Office 2001 MacOs9 updater. The last column of a 470-row table
is set to auto-number and the numbers show up correctly initially but
after adding some data to the table, the numbers go haywire. Either the
first 20 or so cells are all numbered zero or I will find groups of
rows throughout the table with blank spaces where numbers should be and
the numbering sequence excludes these 'blanks'.

I know it's a big table, but I have been using the same table for
almost 10 years and have never seen this problem before. Any clues or
corroboration? TIA.

Stan

--

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

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Stan The Man]

Thank you, John. I will take the precaution of rebuilding the table,
although it has served me well. As you so astutely observe, that can
only be because I am a wizard. ;-)

For what it's worth, when I renumber the cells, they behave fine for a
while and even renumber properly when I add a row - so it's odd that
they should at some later point decide to segregate.

Stan

 

[John McGhie]

Well, it's not "odd" once you understand that the latest versions of Word
have dynamically adjustable tables. Each time the document repaginates,
every cell in the table is rebuilt to adjust its positioning.

It is also the case that if you have two lists of numbers in a document, and
they look exactly the same, you won't actually see that anything has gone
wrong unless you make a change elsewhere in the document. At that stage,
the cells that belong to the first list will suddenly display different
numbering from ones belonging to a second.

So I wouldn't use the word "odd", I would say the whole thing is
astonishingly complex, and unless we took a cruise through the binary file,
it would be difficult to say what, exactly, caused the problem. But the
time we got an answer, you would have long since rebuilt the table, removing
the problem, whatever it was

Oh, and your magical powers may have been subtly enhanced by a little
"luck", perhaps?

Cheers

Thank you, John. I will take the precaution of rebuilding the table,
although it has served me well. As you so astutely observe, that can
only be because I am a wizard. ;-)

For what it's worth, when I renumber the cells, they behave fine for a
while and even renumber properly when I add a row - so it's odd that
they should at some later point decide to segregate.

Stan

--

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

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Stan The Man]

(snip)

Oh, and your magical powers may have been subtly enhanced by a little
"luck", perhaps?

Having worked with this table thousands of times over 8+ years, that
would be some lucky streak! I'm off to the racetrack!!

I accept and learn from your advice - but remain convinced that
something in the latest Word updater has changed the way that this
behaviour is exhibited on my computer. (Otoh, this updater has also
made Word much more stable for me generally.)

Stan

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Stan:

Did you win?

I accept and learn from your advice - but remain convinced that
something in the latest Word updater has changed the way that this
behaviour is exhibited on my computer. (Otoh, this updater has also
made Word much more stable for me generally.)

I did not think there was anything in this updater that hit the numbering.
However, Numbering has been a thorny problem in Microsoft's hide for many
years, ever since the lawyers got involved in the design of the mechanism.
So they are doing patches and teaks to it all of the time.

So it is entirely possible that one of the changes they made has revealed
this problem to you in that table.

It is also entirely possible to get a table to last for years in Word if you
are neat, precise, and meticulous in your editing of the text within the
table. So yes, it could indeed be skill that has got you this far.

Cheers

Stan

--

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

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410