Outline Level Changed to Level 1

[Mike]

Windows XP
Office 2003

I have a document in which certain paragraphs keep getting reset to
Outline level: Level 1 in the Paragraph window. Something seems to be
encoded in the paragraph marks, but I can't remove it nohow.

Only certain paragraphs show this behavior; they are of various styles
and other paragraphs of the same style don't show the behavior.

I can reset the paragraphs to Outline level: Body text by reapplying
the paragraph style and selecting Reapply the formatting ... in the
Modify Style window. I can also use the Clear Formatting command. I
can even replace a paragraph by starting it in the line above, which
is a "good" paragraph. I can even delete the "bad" paragraph as well
as the good ones above and below it. I can delete the style from the
doc then copy the style from the template back in.

All to no avail. As soon as I close the doc and reopen it, the bad
paragraph's outline level has been reset to Level 1.

The only remedy that I'm aware of is saving the entire doc as ASCII
text then reapplying all the styles. Anyone have a notion of how I can
avoid that?

= Mike

 

[Stefan Blom]

Turn off "Define styles based on your formatting" and "Built-in Heading
styles" in Tools | AutoCorrect Options, AutoFormat As You Type tab.

Also, if you are using the Document Map, see this article:
http://word.mvps.org/faqs/general/DocumentMap.htm.

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP


in message
news:9f4e5b3f-0fe6-4d6f-a835-2a8d472cef35@e25g2000prg.googlegroups.com...

 

[Mike]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

Both of the options you suggested I change were already set as you
recommended, so that's out.

I just read the article on the Document Map and I'll explore that
aspect of the problem, as well as the macro you included in the
article. I've been using the Document Map all along. However, to
complicate things, there's this: I've discovered that the outline
levels get reset to Level 1 only after I turn on Change Tracking. As
soon as I do that and save then re-open the doc, Word resets the
outline levels of numerous grafs. I'll see if turning off the Document
Map makes a difference.

In the meantime, I devised a workaround. I changed the outline level
in the style definitions of the grafs that were being reset. I changed
it from Body Level to Level 6. I learned on another list that the Body
Level setting isn't a real setting. It's just NULL (so is Normal).
This may explain why I couldn't force Word to accept my corrections of
the buggy outline levels to Body Level, that is, Word couldn't
override the actual setting of Level 1 with a non-setting of NULL.
But, again, all this is happening with Document Map turned on, so
maybe I'm wrong about the importance of NULL.

In any case, my short-term solution of using a Level 6 outline level
has worked. The grafs don't show up in the TOC and nothing else about
the grafs changes--their formatting in the doc is the same as it was
with the Body Text outline level. The only issue is that we decided to
use a separate template for the funky doc, since it's the only one I'm
working on and we're moving to FrameMaker soon, anyway.

I'll keep you posted.

= Mike

 

[Stefan Blom]

It does seem as if the Document Map is the culprit in this case. And the DM
stops guessing once you explicitly apply levels, as you've noticed.

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP


in message
Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

Both of the options you suggested I change were already set as you
recommended, so that's out.

I just read the article on the Document Map and I'll explore that
aspect of the problem, as well as the macro you included in the
article. I've been using the Document Map all along. However, to
complicate things, there's this: I've discovered that the outline
levels get reset to Level 1 only after I turn on Change Tracking. As
soon as I do that and save then re-open the doc, Word resets the
outline levels of numerous grafs. I'll see if turning off the Document
Map makes a difference.

In the meantime, I devised a workaround. I changed the outline level
in the style definitions of the grafs that were being reset. I changed
it from Body Level to Level 6. I learned on another list that the Body
Level setting isn't a real setting. It's just NULL (so is Normal).
This may explain why I couldn't force Word to accept my corrections of
the buggy outline levels to Body Level, that is, Word couldn't
override the actual setting of Level 1 with a non-setting of NULL.
But, again, all this is happening with Document Map turned on, so
maybe I'm wrong about the importance of NULL.

In any case, my short-term solution of using a Level 6 outline level
has worked. The grafs don't show up in the TOC and nothing else about
the grafs changes--their formatting in the doc is the same as it was
with the Body Text outline level. The only issue is that we decided to
use a separate template for the funky doc, since it's the only one I'm
working on and we're moving to FrameMaker soon, anyway.

I'll keep you posted.

= Mike