Word 2004: List numbering goes awry cross-platform

[Jeremy Speller]

Apologies if this has been covered, but I could not see a reference here or
on the MVP site.

I'm working in a small Mac-based unit in a primarily Windows organisation
and therefore frequently have to send Word 2004 documents to Windows users
for review and comment. I now have a strange situation where numbered lists
either show as 0, 0.0, 0.0.0 or some apparently random number of the
235687.1 variety when opened with Word97 in a Citrix terminal server
environment. This seems to vary according to the page view the user chooses
but nonetheless prints correctly no matter what is shown on screen. I've
used every Mac version of Office since 98 and have never seen this before.
I'm using Windows encoding of attachments from Entourage.

Is this a known issue? Thanks in advance if anyone knows.

J

 

[John McGhie]

Eeeewwww.... That's too hard, go away....

Word Numbering is one of my core specialties, and I've spent all day on
numbering issues at work, so I am loaded for bear here

There's nothing wrong with Word 2004's numbering. It uses the same
numbering engine as Word 2003, so it's not that.

Word 2004, however, does use Unicode for the first time. And coming from a
Mac, that could give Word 97 some problems. In Unicode, each individual
character has a value: if the value is not one the Citrix environment can
support, it will fall back to the closest equivalent, which could be
exciting.

That would account for the strange large random number problem.

The 0, 0.00 problem can happen if the user is restarting lists at "0"
instead of "1". This often occurs if the numbering is coded to, for
example, reset on Heading 1, but the document contains no Heading 1.

If you Zip and flip me one of the offending documents I will take a look at
how it's coded and be able to give you a more definite answer. You will
need a password to get an attachment through the firewall: use
"Jer}Zzyure3a14" in the Subject line of your email.

The fact that the numbering comes right at print time could mean that the
user is using field-based numbering instead of list numbering, and Word is
set to "Update Fields" in Tools>Options>Print on the Citrix machine. To see
if that is the problem, select all text on the Citrix and hit Update Fields
(F9). The numbers may magically come right.

Generally, Word 97 was a numbering bug-farm and it's not the product I would
be using if you need to use Citrix. Go up to Word 2000 and your problems
will be a lot less.

Hope this helps

Apologies if this has been covered, but I could not see a reference here or
on the MVP site.

I'm working in a small Mac-based unit in a primarily Windows organisation
and therefore frequently have to send Word 2004 documents to Windows users
for review and comment. I now have a strange situation where numbered lists
either show as 0, 0.0, 0.0.0 or some apparently random number of the
235687.1 variety when opened with Word97 in a Citrix terminal server
environment. This seems to vary according to the page view the user chooses
but nonetheless prints correctly no matter what is shown on screen. I've
used every Mac version of Office since 98 and have never seen this before.
I'm using Windows encoding of attachments from Entourage.

Is this a known issue? Thanks in advance if anyone knows.

J

--

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

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410