MS Word 2003: Numbered Lists - Numbering dissapears

[Umfriend]

Hi all,

I'm working on a word document with numbered headers (for the TOC) and a lot of outline numbered lists so that it looks like:
-1. tada-
-----(a) tadada
----------(i) tadadaa
----------(ii) tadadab
-----(b)
-2.
-3. Etc.

("-" just to mimic outlining in post)

Frequently, word will stop responding but even worse, frequently, all the numbering and outlining will dissappear and the text will simply be "normal" with hard carriage returns.

Any idea what's up with that?

[Jammrock]

Hi all,

I'm working on a word document with numbered headers (for the TOC) and a lot of outline numbered lists so that it looks like:
-1. tada-
-----(a) tadada
----------(i) tadadaa
----------(ii) tadadab
-----(b)
-2.
-3. Etc.

("-" just to mimic outlining in post)

Frequently, word will stop responding but even worse, frequently, all the numbering and outlining will dissappear and the text will simply be "normal" with hard carriage returns.

Any idea what's up with that?

Word has never been able to do outline numbering well. NEVER! Sadly, only Wordperfect has mastered it, but nobody uses that much any more.

[Nowhere]

I wonder...what about LaTeX/Lyx?

[Umfriend]

Word has never been able to do outline numbering well. NEVER! Sadly, only Wordperfect has mastered it, but nobody uses that much any more.

Don't I know it. I still crave for WP5.1........

Apparantly, numbering can be a HUGE problem in Word, any version indeed. Thinking about:
1. Crating a new template
2. Define the styles (heading and outlined numbers)
3. Save it
4. Create a doc based on the new template
5. Copy all text as "text without formatting" into the new doc
6. Format text by selecting and pressing the style

Might that help? It's still a smallish document (8 pgs), but it'll easily go over 100....

I wanna punch bill in tha face! (Or anyone for that matter)

[dshumake]

Alternatively,

Get Wordperfect 12, write your outline, save as a .doc file.


dshumake

[Tjalfe]

Alternatively,

Get Wordperfect 12, write your outline, save as a .doc file.


dshumake

would word then be able to open it, seeing how it has troubles with such indentation?

[dshumake]

Originally Posted by dshumake
Alternatively,

Get Wordperfect 12, write your outline, save as a .doc file.


dshumake

would word then be able to open it, seeing how it has troubles with such indentation?

I tested in Word 2000. The formating looks perfect. The only problem is in editing. If you want to add a new point or modify the level of a point it doesn't work. To fix--in word goto bullets and numbering and select a new scheme. It now works as expected.

dshumake

[Nowhere]

What about using Wordperfect for writing whole document and saving as doc?

[dshumake]

That was the original point. If the document doesn't need to be edited by someone else it is possible to give them a PDF file (Publish to PDF in WP).

dshumake

[UtwigMU]

You will want to upgrade to Office Longhorn for that, haha .

[spadnos]

OpenOffice seems to work fine for numbering, has one-click PDF export, and reads/writes MS Office file formats pretty well (especially the 2.0 beta)

- Steve

[Umfriend]

Thanks all. What I did with my 7.1MB word file was:
1. Copy all to wordpad
2. Close Word
3. Delete normal.dot
4. Open word
5. Define the styles as I know I would want them and this time have Auto Update on styles and lists turned off
6. Save normal.dot
7. Close Word
8. Open word and copy the text from wordpad without formatting into word
9. Apply the styles to the relevant spots
10. Insert the to diagrams (which I could not imagine could account for 7.5MB

Works! The EXACT same doc is now 140KB...

Course, this was a 7 page doc. Hope I won't have to do this again when it reaches 60 or so...

[Wombat]

Thanks all. What I did with my 7.1MB word file was:
1. Copy all to wordpad
2. Close Word
3. Delete normal.dot
4. Open word
5. Define the styles as I know I would want them and this time have Auto Update on styles and lists turned off
6. Save normal.dot
7. Close Word
8. Open word and copy the text from wordpad without formatting into word
9. Apply the styles to the relevant spots
10. Insert the to diagrams (which I could not imagine could account for 7.5MB

Works! The EXACT same doc is now 140KB...

Course, this was a 7 page doc. Hope I won't have to do this again when it reaches 60 or so...

It might have had revision tracking turned on. But yeah, Word can be really inefficient. A lot of times I'll open a .doc in OpenOffice and re-save it - that will usually clean it up nicely.

[Umfriend]

No, revisioning was not on, imagine that. What I gleaned from googling is that especially heading numbering, auto updating it, and actually deciding while you work how you want it to look (i.e. changing it a couple of times) can really screw things up.