Word's Numbering Explained

[GordonP]

After running into list numbering problems in a 200-page document (using
Word 2003), I discovered John McGhie's article on the web "Word's Numbering
Explained." Phew! I previously had no idea numbering is such a complex
matter.

I've been studying John's article together with some other information on
the web and am learning a lot. Thank's John for your clear and detailed
explanation of a complex subject.

Two questions:

On Page 12 of John's article, there's a reference to unchecking the Tabs and
Backspace Set Left Indent in Tools | Options | Edit. I see that check box in
Word 2000 (which I have on my old computer) but the check box isn't in Word
2003. Word 2003 seems to behave as if that check box is checked. How can I
turn off that option, as John recommends, in Word 2003?

On Page 15, John says "I recommend that you use the orphan Normal style so
that it's not used in the document, and ensure that none of the styles that
contain numbering in the document are based upon it." I've puzzled over that
sentence for a while, but don't understand what John is trying to convey.
Use the Normal style for what? "...use it so that it's not used in the
document..."? What does the pronoun "it" (used twice in the sentence) refers
to?

I'll appreciate any suggestions.

GordonP

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

In Word 2002 and 2003, the option is Tools | AutoCorrect Options |
AutoFormat As You Type: "Set first- and left-indent with tabs and
backspaces."

John will have to chime in on what he means by the latter puzzler, but see
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/numbering/OutlineNumbering.html for a clear
explanation of outline numbering and
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/styles/HowStylesCascade.html for a
discussion of the styles issue that John may be referring to; does he
recommend basing something on "No Style"?

 

[GordonP]

Thanks, Suzanne, for providing an answer to my first question. I've found
the option where you said it is. I wish Microsoft wouldn't make our lives
difficult by switching things from one place to another without providing
any obvious way to trace such changes.

The two URLs you suggested are interesting, but don't seem to relate
directly to the problem I'm trying to deal with. My document contains many
sequences of numbered steps that describe how to use Photoshop Elements. In
various chapters, I have many sets of instructions, most starting with Step
1. In some places, though, I have a set of instructions that might, for
example, contain Steps 1 through 10. Then might come something like, "If, in
Step 4, you chose *** instead of ***, then proceed as follows." That's
followed by a seies of steps starting at Step 5.

So, what I need, is a way that I can reliably set a list of instructions to
start with a specific list number.

Another concern, referred to in John's article, is that a file that works
well on my computer would turn up on someone else's computer with completely
different numbering.

John refers to this problem at the bottom of Page 24. There he says "I
prepared the article in Word 2000, then saved it in Word 2 for Windows
format, closed it and re-opened the file. This the simplest way to strip the
numbering back to ordinary typed text that won't change no matter where you
display it." Word 2003 doesn't seem to provide a way to save a document in
Word 2 format. Is there a way I can save the list numbering in my Word 2003
document as ordinary text so that it's not dependent on styles that a person
who receives the document might have on her/his computer?

GordonP

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You can convert auto numbering to text, yes. Stefan Blom has provided the
following instructions:

To convert autonumbering (paragraph/outline numbering and LISTNUM
fields) to plain text, do the following: Make sure the active
document is the one you want to convert. Then press ALT+F11 to
display the Visual Basic Editor. On the View menu, click
Immediate Window. In the Immediate Window, type

ActiveDocument.ConvertNumbersToText

and press ENTER.

Note that if paragraph/outline numbering was applied with styles,
it isn't completely gone (CTRL+Q will bring it back!) unless you
also clear it from the style definitions.

 

[GordonP]

Suzanne:

I greatly appreciate your fast responses to my questions. You're a treasure!

I look forward to following what you suggested. It's getting late at night
now and my mind is tired, so I'll try it out in the morning when I'm fresh.

GordonP

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Always a good policy!

 

[GordonP]

Suzanne:

It seems that the further I get into list numbering in Word, the more
confused I get -- I'm probably not the only one!

In "Word's Numbering Explained," John refers to List Templates and states
that the seven most recently used List Templates are displayed in the
Bullets and Numbering dialog box. I see these, and have often been puzzled
by the different templates I see each time I display that dialog box. Word
doesn't seem to provide any access to List Templates. Where are List
Templates saved? Can I access them and control them in any way?

I'm a long-time user of Word since the DOS version first appeared and have
mostly been very satisfied with its performance and capabilities. Prior to
using the original version of Word, I used WordStar and Multimate --
remember those? At one time, I even had to work with WordPerfect (DOS
version) because that was what one of my clients required.

In previous projects, Word's handling of lists did all I needed without a
problem. The project I'm working on now requires much more sophisticated
handling of lists, so I'm getting quite an education. Thank you and the
other MVPs for the information and help you provide.

GordonP

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

List templates are beyond my ken. I think they can be addressed directly via
VBA, though. The advantage to linking numbering to styles is that you can
always be sure of getting the same list by going in through Modify Style for
the Level 1 style in the outline list. Also, I think that when you visit
Format | Bullets and Numbering, the pane that's selected reflects the list
you're using.

 

[GordonP]

More on the subject of numbering steps in procedures:

I've stuudied John's article and other material carefully, but I atill don't
see how to do what I need to do.

The problem is this:

I write a series of steps: 1 through 10.

At the end of that series, I say something like "If you chose ***** in step
4, then proceed as follows."

Then I write a series of steps that needs to start at Step 5.

How do I make that series of steps start with the number 5?

I see information that enables me to to create a series of steps that
continue from the previous sequence of numbers or restart from 1, but I
don't see a way to start a new sequence from another number such as 5.

Can you offer any help?

GordonP

 

[GordonP]

Thanks for your helpful suggestions and for your acknowledgement that List
Templates are beyond your ken. I hope there's someone else who will pick up
on this topic and provide us all with some education about List Templates.

GordonP

 

[Shauna Kelly]

Hi Gordon

A ListTemplate is a construct saved within a document file. It stores a
numbering 'structure'. ListTemplates are exposed only indirectly in the
user interface, but they are exposed in the Word object model and can
therefore be accessed by VBA and other languages.

Imagine a document with heading numbering set up in the classic way:
1 Europe
1.1 France
1.1.1 Paris
1.1.2 Lyon
1.2 Germany
1.2.1 Munich
....
2 Asia
2.1 Thailand

In this case, you would set up all 9 heading styles (Heading 1, Heading
2, ... Heading 9) in one numbering structure because (eg) you want
Heading 2 to start re-numbering from 1 after each Heading 1 (to get 1.1
and 2.1), Heading 3 to start re-numbering after each Heading 3 etc.

That structure is a ListTemplate. The ListTemplate stores which styles
go with which of the 9 levels. It stores information about the numbering
(roman, arabic), how to display the numbering (eg "Chapter 1" or "1" or
"(1)"), how far to indent the numbers, and how they re-start. In short,
all the things that are exposed in the Customize Outline Numbered List
dialog box.

A ListTemplate may have one level (akin to the "Bulleted" and "Numbered"
tabs on the Bullets and Numbering dialog box), or exactly 9 levels (akin
to the "Outline Numbered" tab).

We can imagine our document with the text above having exactly one
ListTemplate. It has 9 levels, with a heading style attached to each
level, and it knows how to display the numbering for the headings. I
sometimes think of a ListTemplate as a little wooden box with 9
compartments into each of which we put information about the numbering
required for that level.

A ListTemplate may or may not have a name. You can assign a name when
you're setting up numbering by using the "ListNum field list name" box.
There is some belief that giving a list template a name provides some
stability.

So far, so good.

But Word sometimes gets mixed up. It creates extraneous ListTemplates.
It gets confused about which one to use. If you don't talk to it nicely,
it moves styles around from one little wooden box to another. It tries
to put the same style into more than one wooden box. When I copy and
paste from one document to another, it isn't quite sure what to do with
the information in the wooden boxes. And so on.

For example, before Word 2003, every time you even opened the Customize
Outline Numbered List dialog box, Word would create another
ListTemplate. Before Word 2002 (or was it 2000?) Word had a limit of the
number of ListTemplates it could handle in one document, but no way to
'clean out' all the extraneous ones it had created, causing Word to
crash. In some cases, if you click in anything except a paragraph in the
style attached to Level 1 of the ListTemplate, Word either creates a new
ListTemplate or gets confused about which one it is supposed to be
editing. Hence the exhortation to click within a Heading 1 paragraph,
even if you want to change the numbering for (say) Heading 4.

None of this is exposed to the user in the user interface. None of it
has been documented by Microsoft. And only some of it is exposed in the
object model to programmers (eg even in code, you can't delete a
ListTemplate). This makes it just a little difficult to know how to
manage it all<g>.

Everything any of us have learned about numbering has been through
experimentation. John's document is the supreme example of such
experimentation.

Finally, let's look at what you see depicted in the 8 panels in the
Bullets and Numbering dialog boxes. They're called List Galleries (at
least within the object model). They are a mishmash of (a) numbering
used at the selection and (b) numbering you have previously used.

When you use a numbering structure, Word stores it in the registry. When
you click in a paragraph and open one of the tabs on the Bullets and
Numbering dialog, Word displays what it finds in the registry and tries
to highlight the one that matches the paragraph in which you clicked.
But given the messes that Word ends up in, this sometimes goes wrong.

Word gets particularly confused if, eg, you have all your heading styles
in one neat structure, click in (eg) a Heading 3 paragraph and then
choose a different one of those ListGalleries. It will apply the
first-level number format in your chosen ListGallery to your Heading 3
paragraph, leaving Headings 1 and 2 messed up. Do that a couple of times
and you have an irrevocable mess!

Trial and error (and no more - remember, none of this is documented)
suggests that the best way to proceed is to reset these panels
occasionally, but, if you're modifying the numbering in a document and
one of the List Galleries is highlighted, then always use that one.

Hope this helps.


Shauna Kelly. Microsoft MVP.
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word

 

[Stefan Blom]

Apply a numbered style to the relevant paragraphs. By default, numbering
will continue through-out the document (for paragraphs using that style).

For example, you can apply the built-in List Number style; hold Shift as you
press the arrow next to the Style box on the Formatting toolbar, scroll
until you see "List Number" and click it. See also
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/styles/ApplyAStyle.html.

Note that you can modify
(http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/styles/ModifyAStyle.html) the List Number
style to suit your needs.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Thanks for the follow-up, Shauna. The parts of it I use religiously are to
always go in through the Level 1 style and to reset the List Gallery
periodically.

 

[GordonP]

Thanks Shauna for all the detailed information. It will take me a while to
digest it all.

GordonP

 

[GordonP]

Thanks, Stefan.

GordonP

Apply a numbered style to the relevant paragraphs. By default, numbering
will continue through-out the document (for paragraphs using that style).

For example, you can apply the built-in List Number style; hold Shift as
you
press the arrow next to the Style box on the Formatting toolbar, scroll
until you see "List Number" and click it. See also
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/styles/ApplyAStyle.html.

Note that you can modify
(http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/styles/ModifyAStyle.html) the List Number
style to suit your needs.

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP


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