Julia
Simply for the sake of interest, I tried setting up your Number Format
programmatically in Word 2K and Word XP and speculate that the string length
limitation is a limitation of the user interface, not the list template
property for number format.
Once all other properties of the scheme were set up (in Word XP through the
user interface, in Word 2K programmatically), I ran the following macro to
set the number formats to your liking).
Sub Special()
Dim olt As ListTemplate
Set olt = ActiveDocument.Styles("Heading 1").ListTemplate
With olt
.ListLevels(1).NumberFormat = "Special Interrogatory No. %1"
.ListLevels(2).NumberFormat = "Response to Special Interrogatory No. %2"
End With
Set olt = Nothing
End Sub
and it seems to work. If you subsequently attempt to edit the number format
through the Word interface, Word will truncate the number format to the
maximum number of characters allowed through the user interface, and you
would have to run the macro again to correct that. I did not take it one
step further - that is, work with the document for any length time, so
feasibility of this method would require more testing to ensure that nothing
goes sideways as a result of editing the document and subsequent editing to
the styles.
Hope this helps,
Regards,
Julie