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Subject:RE: Value of giving up numbering in Word? From:stevefjong -at- comcast -dot- net To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Thu, 13 Mar 2008 21:38:20 +0000
Of late I have been working with Word files created by third parties, which we have been rebranding or (sometimes) reworking. Many have numbered procedural lists created using Word's automatic list-numbering feature, and they can be nightmarish. We don't have the luxury of building clean documents; we have to take what we get and make them work.
(Have you ever opened a multi-hundred page Word document full of numbered lists and have the numbers all turn to 0 before your eyes, and then go into a loop of changing to 1s, 2s, bullets, and 0s again? That really makes your day!)
If your procedural lists are fairly stable, it might be a wise idea to give up on autonumbering and just type the numbers by hand. I acknowledge my heresy, and realize that it's a manual and error-prone step, but if you do a risk-benefit analysis, you just might agree with me.
-- Steve
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