Restart Paragraph Numbering

[SBD]

This has been driving me crazy for a day now. I think this is a bug in Word.
I have a style sheet in a DOT file that is used to standardize a type of
document we use. I've gotten most of the styles working.

But one style is driving me up the wall. That style is the Step style that
is used to create numbered list paragraphs to denote procedural steps. The
problem is the sequential numbering. I can't get the numbers to restart!!!!
What is happening is when I format a paragraph as a Step, it picks up the
number from the previous Step formatted paragraph even if its part of a
different area and there are several other paragraphs in between . When I try
setting it to Restart numbering, it doesn't work. Either the number stays the
same, or all the Step praragraphs indent to the left or some other wierd
thing happens. I've followed the instructions in Help and they don't work.
This should be such a simple thing, but it don't like me. I recall earlier
versions of Word would automatically start with 1 unless the previous
paragraph was part of the list style. But Word XP (which is what I'm using)
seems to work differently.

Anyway, can someone tell me why this doesn't like me? Or, if this is a bug,
is there a fix available?

Scott<>

 

[Margaret Aldis]

There are several different approaches to this. See

http://www.word.mvps.org/faqs/numbering/ListRestartMethods.htm

 

[G.G.Yagoda]

In Word 2000 there is no Step style nor anything in Help that resembles
your description.

If you show us samples of what these paragraph numbers look like,
somebody may be able to suggest an easy alternative.

 

[SBD]

G.G.
Sorry I didn't make it clearer. As I said I created a style sheet. The Step
style is one I created with a format of:
Normal+ Indent: Left 0/5", Hanging: 0.25", Tabs" 0.75", Left, Numbered +
Level: 1 + Numbering Style: 1, 2, 3, ... + Start at: 1 + Alignment" Left +
Aligned at: 1.5" + Tab After: 1.75" + Indent at: 1.75", Autopmatically Update

Scott<>

 

[SBD]

Margaret,
Thanks, I found your articles and John McGhie's and I just can't get them to
work. When I follow the "Restart numbering manually with the Restart
Numbering command." method it just doesn't work. I tried right clicking and
select Restart numbering but nothing happens. I tried a couple of the VBA
methods and they were unpredictable. The higher style doesn't work since I'm
using a simple list.

The more I read, the more I am wondering what the Word programmers were
thinking (or where they thinking???). I understand why they set up numbered
lists to be continuous, but they should have provided a list type that is
stand alone or an easy way to restart numbering.

I would be happy to send you the DOT file and a smaple document or try
anything else you can recommend.

Scott<>

Scott

 

[G.G.Yagoda]

For numbering it's almost always best to use Word's built-in Heading
1-9 styles or the built-in List Number 1-5 styles rather than create
your own.

Why not set up the Heading 1 style to be formatted the way your Step
style is, then do a find/replace on the Step style?

If that's too much trouble, how about trying hidden LISTNUM fields as
described at Margaret Aldis's site. To do that you'd find the last
paragraph in the Step style that precedes the one you want to restart;
at the very end of that last paragraph, just before the paragraph mark,
put in a LISTNUM field as follows:

{ LISTNUM \S 0 }

Select the field and put it in hidden font. What that does is to wedge
in -- and hide -- an extra number with a start value of 0, so the next
Step style will restart at 1.

 

[Margaret Aldis]

Hi Scott

From your post where you list the details of the style, I think I can see
one thing that is definitely not helping here - the 'Automatically Update'
setting means that every time you change the list format on an item Word
will be trying to update the numbering format of the style. Since setting
style numbering needs to be done systematically via the style dialog this is
a Bad Thing.

I think you should Modify the style once more to make the numbering stick -
you may want to consider using the 'outline numbering' tab at this point,
which would give you the option of the higher level style restart method and
possibly gives more reliability and control. You might also need to reset
your existing Step paragraphs to style (to remove any direct number
formatting that has got applied during your experimentation so far), either
by using Ctrl-Q or by reapplying the style.

Once you have a non-updating style, and all the paragraphs matching that
style, you should be able to use manual restarts (with the caveats about
copy and paste in my article) or one of the other methods to restart
reliably.