Numbered Lists

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Numbered Lists

Everyone hates Word numbering, including me. It just doesn’t seem to work right when we need it to the most. However, if you carefully set up numbering BEFORE you begin formatting, you’ll be fine.

Numbered lists aren’t difficult to format. Generally, you can just hit the numbering button on the toolbar.

One of the problems you may come across is that the numbering is not in sequential order.

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Tip 21: Easiest Way to Fix Numbered or Bulleted Lists

This is so easy you won’t believe it. Often, in numbered lists, a number becomes skipped or starts over at 1 again, just use the Format Painter to correct the badly numbered or bulleted paragraphs.

Select the last paragraph that was properly numbered or bulleted. Hit the Format Painter button, which is shown in Figure 10-1.


Figure 10-1: Format Painter Button

  • Hitting the Format Painter once turns it on for application to one other area only and it automatically shuts itself off after it’s been used.

  • Hitting the Format Painter twice turns it on until you click on the button again, or Esc, to turn it off.

    Once you’ve hit the button, the format is “copied.” Click once anywhere in another paragraph and the same formatting is applied to it.

    Be careful not to select portions of the paragraphs because it will format only selections. It works best to simply click once anywhere inside the paragraph.

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Outline Numbering

Outline numbering can be very difficult. The good news is that you can overcome the difficulties! I have had several people tell me that my methods don’t work. For each one of those people, I’ve had dozens that tell me the methods work great. You decide.

For documents that have previously been formatted and the formatting just won’t work, please see Formatting Outline Numbered Templates below.

Formatting Outline Numbered Headings Some documents—military documents are a good example—have every paragraph numbered. This makes it easy for them to refer to later. You can also bookmark them and cross-reference them. Then, if an item's number changes because you inserted another item, the cross-reference stays linked with the correct paragraph.

To format outline numbering for headings:

  1. Go to Format → Bullets and Numbering

  2. Choose an outline numbering that shows headings.

    (Remember that you should reset all of your numbering styles in this dialog before you begin!)

  3. Hit the Customize button.

  4. Click on each numbering level in the left-hand column and set the indents and space between numbers and text as desired.

  5. Hit Ok.

    Note 

    Some numbering schemes have lengthy numbers that take up a lot of space. For instance, an item numbered 10.12.22.4 that is followed by a half-inch indent can take up quite a bit of the body width of your document.

    Your paragraph of text is now indented considerably and an otherwise short paragraph can take up a lot more page length.

    Using Outline numbering for your heading styles is not recommended unless it meets the requirements of your company or firm, or if your document is limited to perhaps Heading 3 or 4.

To use the first level of that outline numbering, your text must begin on the left margin. To use level 2, hit Tab or use the Increase Indent button on the toolbar, and then type your text. To use level 3, hit Tab again, and so on. Use Shift+Tab to decrease your indent to the previous level.

Not only does using Tab and Shift+Tab increase and decrease your paragraph indent, it also changes the style formatting on the paragraph. Watch it switch from Heading 1 to Heading 2 and so on as you Tab or Shift+Tab.

Formatting Outline Numbered Templates

Now suppose you've struggled over three or four Heading outline numbered documents, and now you want to continue with these better methods.

  1. In a new document, type some sample text for heading levels 1, 2, 3, and 4, or however many levels you used in your document.

  2. Format them as outline numbered using the method above.

  3. If this is exactly how you wanted it to look the first time around, save this file as a template. Close it.

  4. Open one of your badly formatted documents.

  5. Hit Format → Style and hit the Organizer button. Your document's styles appear in the left-hand side of the window. On the right, you'll see normal.dot.

  6. Close normal.dot with the Close button. The Close button turns into an Open button. Hit it and open your new outline numbered template.

  7. Copy whatever styles you created in your template over to your existing document.

  8. Close the template.

  9. Hit OK. All of your previous heading styles should now be replaced with appropriately outline numbered heading styles.



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Dreamboat on Word
Dreamboat on Word: Word 2000, Word 2002, Word 2003 (On Office series)
ISBN: 0972425845
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 130
Authors: Anne Troy

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