Setting bullets for different levels of indent in a bulleted list

[Steven Allison-Bunnell]

Word 2004 v11.2, OS 10.4.4

I am completely baffled by the Bullets and Numbering gallery and the
Customize Bullets dialog box, and how they impact the bullets shown in the
formatting palette.

I am trying to set up a set of bullets to be used for nested bullets when I
hit return and tab to demote a list item to the next level down. But Word is
using a set of bullets that I can't seem to control.

I've tried clicking on one of the bullet groups in the gallery, clicking
Customize, and then setting the bullets in that dialog to the list that I
want. But this dialog does not seem to respond as expected -- half the time,
the bullets you save are jumbled up, replace each other, or do not stick.

And the gallery item that opens, and the bullet list in the customize dialog
seems to bounce around depending on which bullet you have selected in your
document or which bullet you've chosen in the formatting palette. And then
the list in the formatting palette changes in an incomprehensible way.

But none of this seems to have any affect on the bullets displayed at lower
levels of the list.

I've been using Word forever and consider myself a power user, but this has
me totally stumped.

Is this a bug or a feature?

How can I set the bullets for a particular level of the list to be used in
the formatting palette? (I've set the List Bullet styles manually, but then
I have to apply them for each list item).

Help!

Steve Allison-Bunnell
Educational Web Adventure

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Steve:

Off you go to http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/index.html

For an in-depth treatment, see:
http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/Numbering.htm

The key fact you are missing is that Word's numbering (bullets are just a
special case of numbering) is controlled by a structure called a List
Template.

A List Template conceptually is very similar to the structure of an Ordered
List in HTML, however it's much more complex. For example, it has
potentially nine levels.

The List Template contains the numbering formatting and indenting. Each
list template can have up to nine paragraph styles linked to it. The rest
of the formatting comes from the linked paragraph styles.

Above List Templates we have List Styles. A List Style combines a List
Template and its associated styles and applies both as a single entity.

Munch on those articles I sent you to, then come back here with specific
questions and I will happily answer them for you.

Cheers

Word 2004 v11.2, OS 10.4.4

I am completely baffled by the Bullets and Numbering gallery and the
Customize Bullets dialog box, and how they impact the bullets shown in the
formatting palette.

I am trying to set up a set of bullets to be used for nested bullets when I
hit return and tab to demote a list item to the next level down. But Word is
using a set of bullets that I can't seem to control.

I've tried clicking on one of the bullet groups in the gallery, clicking
Customize, and then setting the bullets in that dialog to the list that I
want. But this dialog does not seem to respond as expected -- half the time,
the bullets you save are jumbled up, replace each other, or do not stick.

And the gallery item that opens, and the bullet list in the customize dialog
seems to bounce around depending on which bullet you have selected in your
document or which bullet you've chosen in the formatting palette. And then
the list in the formatting palette changes in an incomprehensible way.

But none of this seems to have any affect on the bullets displayed at lower
levels of the list.

I've been using Word forever and consider myself a power user, but this has
me totally stumped.

Is this a bug or a feature?

How can I set the bullets for a particular level of the list to be used in
the formatting palette? (I've set the List Bullet styles manually, but then
I have to apply them for each list item).

Help!

Steve Allison-Bunnell
Educational Web Adventure

--

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

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[Steven Allison-Bunnell]

John,
Thank you very much. I gather from reading your articles and other resources
that the only way to keep list bulleting under control is to define and
apply List Styles.

I can certainly do that. It's just a shame the the automated list feature is
such a mess when it's so easy to use!

Cheers,
Steve

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Steven:

Yes, I agree whole-heartedly. I have been campaigning to get this fixed for
YEARS. So has Shauna

The problem is that they made the mechanism "Too Simple". In an effort to
make it "easy to use" they did not explain the constraints and
considerations, and they did not (until very recently) code Word to check
for and warn of the pitfalls.

This means the user can create a series of undefined, blind, circular or
recursive references within the internal structures of the document. Which
they don't know about, because in an effort to keep things simple, Microsoft
refuses to tell them about it.

Shauna and I spend an interesting evening with the designer of this code
module at Redmond a couple of months ago. Needless to say, he's as
frustrated as we are. He has this seriously powerful and flexible mechanism
out there that's the answer to a documenter's prayers, yet it keeps
destroying documents because all that power is in the hands of users who
cannot know what they're doing, and there's nothing to stop them doing the
wrong thing.

Word 2003 on the PC now checks for some of the most obvious breakages and
resolves them internally. Buy "Product Marketing" STILL won't allow the
Help authors to explain what is actually going on so they can avoid the
problem.

The NEXT version of Microsoft Office should fix this issue for all time.
The move to the XML File Format means that Word MUST be coded to fix these
problems, because anything else is illegal in the XML format. So either
they have to make it impossible for Word to allow these errors, or they have
to explain how to avoid them. Either way would do, but I would prefer the
latter: it brings greater flexibility.

Cheers

John,
Thank you very much. I gather from reading your articles and other resources
that the only way to keep list bulleting under control is to define and
apply List Styles.

I can certainly do that. It's just a shame the the automated list feature is
such a mess when it's so easy to use!

Cheers,
Steve

--

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

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410