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  General

  • Word's numbering explained
  • Remove manually typed numbering
  • Safely update a document's styles from its template

  Page Numbering

  • “Page X of Y” displays or prints as “Page 1 of 1,” “Page 2 of 2” (or “Page 2 of 1”) and so on
  • How to control the page numbering in a Word document
  • Why do all the page numbers in my Word 2002 document display as 0?
  • Front matter numbered separately
  • Include the chapter number with the page number

  List Numbering

  • Word's numbering explained
  • Methods for restarting list numbering
  • VBA: Return the number, or list level, or outline level of a paragraph.

  Other

  • Whenever I update my Table of Contents it acquires unwanted tabs
  • Customizing your table of contents with switches
  • Automatic "intentionally blank" page
  • How can I use an AutoNum field but suppress the period after the number or use a different separator character?
  • Create a numbered list using SEQuence fields
  • How to insert captions that include chapter numbers
  • Creating sequentially numbered documents (such as invoices)
  • Sequentially numbering multiple copies of single document using a macro
  • Sequentially numbering multiple copies of single document using a mailmerge

Direct numbering

« Table of contents

« Applying numbering

Numbering can be applied directly to paragraphs, just as a font or indent can be. This is known as direct formatting numbering. If you select a paragraph or set of paragraphs and click the Numbering button on the toolbar, you will get direct numbering. If you use the Format>Bullets and Numbering command on the Format menu, you may get direct numbering, or you may get style-based numbering, depending upon which List Template you choose.

Direct numbering is by far the most common numbering seen in the corporate environment, and overwhelmingly the most troublesome and difficult to fix.

When you apply direct numbering, the paragraph simply contains a pointer to a List Template. If you copy the paragraph to another document the List Template is copied to the other document as well, as a separate object, and added to the ones that are already in it.

Consider a list of seven items. Five were created in the document. They have List Template number 213 applied. Two were copied from another document. Two users edited the other document. The two paragraphs have List Templates 7 and 128 applied. The result now has List Templates 213, 7 and 128 applied to the seven paragraphs. The seven paragraphs are actually members of three separate lists, and only one of them is applied anywhere else in the document.

Similarly, if you move a paragraph from one list to another within the same document, you will get exactly the same problem; and you are likely to get "spaghetti numbering" as soon as you do so, as a result of the mixture of List Templates present within a single sequence of consecutive paragraphs. (to give the simplest example, you might end up with a list numbered: 1,2,5,3,4).

If other users apply or adjust any of these paragraphs, they will apply their own List Template to some of them. Nevertheless, chances are the numbering will break before that happens.