Avoiding Word 97's autonumbering bugs (Was: Understanding numbering, bullets, styles in Word97)

[David Knopf <david -at- KNOPF -dot- COM>]

Amy,

Welcome to Word 97! :-/

I suspect you've run into one Word 97's most notorious bugs (at least among
help authors). Basically, autonumbering of lists and auto-formatting of
complex lists including both numbered and bulleted items just doesn't work
very well in Word 97. The symptoms you report are typical: autonumbered
lists losing their indent when you 'restart numbering,' bullets turning into
numbers, numbers turning into bullets, etc.

The first thing to do is make sure you have Service Release 1 for Word
installed. You can tell by choosing Help>About. The first line of text in
the About dialog box should say "Microsoft Word 97 SR-1." If not, you should
download SR-1 (Service Release 1) from http://www.microsoft.com and install
it. The service release corrects some of the list formatting problems.

Even with SR-1 installed, though, you are still likely to encounter problems
with autonumbering in any but the simplest of lists. My recommendation is to
avoid autonumbering altogether. I've written up a description of how to do
this and posted it on my Web site. Drop by http://www.knopf.com and check
out the "Tip of the Week," which describes a good workaround for the
autonumbering bugs. One caveat, though: I've described the workaround
specifically with RoboHELP users in mind. The same technique, though, will
work with any Word document.

David Knopf
Knopf Online
Tel: 415-820-2356
E-mail: mailto:david -at- knopf -dot- com
Web: http://www.knopf.com

Writing * WinHelp * Web Sites * Training * Consulting
RoboHELP Certified Trainer * RoboHELP Certified Consultant

| -----Original Message-----
| From: Technical Writers List; for all Technical Communication issues
| [mailto:TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU]On Behalf Of Amy G. Peacock
| Sent: Thursday, May 14, 1998 11:04 AM
| To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
| Subject: Understanding numbering, bullets, styles in Word97
|
|
| Greetings all (an especially those of you who are expert Word 97
| users),
|
| Me again.
| I've been working on a doc that is about 20 pages long. I have made
| use of styles available to me in the normal template. I'm trying to
| understand the relationship between the styles associated with
| bulleted lists and numbered lists (List Bullet and List Number, I
| think) and the 'Bullets and numbering...' option under Format, and the
| number/bullets buttons on the tool bar.
|
| How do they work together? Or do they? I find that I can't predict
| how things are going to change when I go in and increase an indent
| here - or change from numbers to bullets there... If I change one
| thing then my doc suddenly has a mind of its own and I have bullets
| where I had numbers, no indent where there used to be one, numbering
| that doesn't flow (BTW, I do know about the Restart numbering and
| continuous numbering options). The problem seems to stem from the fact
| that I have lists within lists. Should I use only one of the
| aforementioned options?
|
| I have added sections breaks in an effort to keep changes that I make
| to one list from affecting another list. I don't know if this is the
| right thing to do.
|
| That coupled with Word (on NT, I might add) contemplating its navel
| today to no end...well, let's just say my frustration level is rather
| high right now. I have probably said every four-letter explitive I can
| think of twice today.
|
| I hate to burden the list with my qustions like this, but I don't have
| anyone else to ask. I have looked in the archives and didn't find much
| that helped me. Macros and such are beyond me. I went through this
| same kind of frustration with Front Page but at least there I can go
| in a tweak the HTML.
|
| Any help would be appreciated. Send replies to me so I don't goop up
| the list with this stuff.
| Is it Friday yet?
|
| Amy Peacock
| techwriter & jewelrymaker
| apeacock -at- wolfenet -dot- com
|
| &^&^&^~~~
|
|
|