Trouble maintaining outline formatting

[Emma Schmidt]

I'm trying to outline my class notes from this past semester in Word 2007.
However, I'm having difficulty starting an outline, and then maintaining the
formatting/multi-level numbering. I think I've figured out the starting part
well enough to make it through the rest of the year. My main problem is that
when I save and close Word say, for the night, when I reopen my outline the
next day, all of the formatting is gone. The only thing left are the roman
numerals from the highest level and some of the indentations. Am I missing
something really obvious as far as making sure that the formatting is saved
as well? I've also checked in all of the different views (print layout,
draft, outline, etc.) and the formatting is still missing. Any ideas??

 

[DeanH]

It is not usual practise to type and modify formatting within the Outline
View, if that is what you are doing. The Outline View is controlled by the
use of the Outline Level applied to the Styles.
I believe your trouble could be that you are not modifying Styles but
applying manual formatting which sometimes can be cancelled when opening the
document. In Tools, Templates and Add-ins, uncheck "Automatically update
document styles".
For a guide to using styles, please see:
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/
and the Styles in Mircosoft Word section.

This is for 2003 and prior, maybe different for 2007.
Hope this helps.
DeanH

 

[Emma Schmidt]

I'm working in the print layout view. I don't see an option to do "tools,
templates, etc." I've just started using Word 2007 recently. I would say I
had been using Word 2003 until about two weeks ago and I'm just too busy
right now to actually sit down and figure out what the main differences are.
So, I've been outlining in 2007 the same way I used to in 2003. Maybe if I
described to you how I started my outline it might be helpful? I clicked on
the multi-level numbering button and selected the style I wanted. I started
typing from there. I had a couple problems getting it to continue with the
formatting but once I figured that out I got a considerable amount of my work
done. Just now, I moved locations so I had to shut down and reopen my
outline and about half of the numbering was gone, all of the first and second
levels were missing numbering. I selected all of the text and hit the
multi-level numbering button again and it all reappeared but any additional
formatting I did with the outline such as 'ctl-t' was undone. Hope that
helps explain it a little better!

 

[Stefan Blom]

Set up numbering as a list style, which should make it more stable: On the
Home ribbon tab, click Multilevel List, and then click Define New List Style.
Type a name for your list style, and specify the desired number formats. For
more options, click Format, and then click Numbering. (You can learn more on
the settings in the Modify Multilevel List dialog box by looking at
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/numbering/OutlineNumbering.html.)

To (re-)use a list style or edit it, look under the "List Styles" heading in
Home tab | Multilevel List. Clicking it applies it to text; right-clicking
and then choosing Modify from the context menu opens the Modify Style dialog
box (for the list style).