Demotion behaviour in outline view

[Mister.Fred.Ma]

I am using Word 2003, a corporate template. In outline view, I have a
level 1 heading whose style name is corporate-specific e.g. Company
Heading 1. That's outline level 1, not outline numbering level. When
I press Tab, I expect to see it demote to Company Level 2. There is
more than one heading style associated with each level. For example,
Annex Heading 1 also has outline level 1. I was hoping that somehow,
Word and/or the template was sophisticated enough to figure out that
Company Heading 1 demotes to Company Heading 2 (and vice-versa).

What happens is strange. Company Level 1 demotes to another company-
specific style which has outline level "Body Text". Basically, it has
no outline level.

How can I get the demotion to yield a style of the appropriate outline
level?

Since there is more than one style associated with each outline level,
how can I get the demotion to yield the "sensible" style associated
with the proper outline level?

 

[Mister.Fred.Ma]

I am using Word 2003, a corporate template. In outline view, I have a
level 1 heading whose style name is corporate-specific e.g. Company
Heading 1. That's outline level 1, not outline numbering level. When
I press Tab, I expect to see it demote to Company Level 2. There is
more than one heading style associated with each level. For example,
Annex Heading 1 also has outline level 1. I was hoping that somehow,
Word and/or the template was sophisticated enough to figure out that
Company Heading 1 demotes to Company Heading 2 (and vice-versa).

What happens is strange. Company Level 1 demotes to another company-
specific style which has outline level "Body Text". Basically, it has
no outline level.

How can I get the demotion to yield a style of the appropriate outline
level?

Since there is more than one style associated with each outline level,
how can I get the demotion to yield the "sensible" style associated
with the proper outline level?

Actually, even stranger is that when I use the Demote button rather
than Tab, paragraph appears to demote by shifting right, and the
Outline toolbar shows that the outline level changed from 1 to 2.
However, the style is still Company Level 1, and opening up the panels
to modify the style shows that the paragraph's outline level is still
1 (not 2, as shown in the Outline toolbar).

I was concerned that this unintended and ambiguous change to the
style's outline level would propagate throughout the document (I like
to enable Automatic Update), but it did not.

Is it commonly known that Tab and Demote button have different
outcomes?

How is it possible that the demoted paragraph has two outline levels
shown for it?

Shouldn't demotion yield a paragraph style that is already associated
with the higher number outline level? How can I accomplish this?

Why didn't Automatic Update cause the "new" outline level 2 propagate
to all Company Level 1 paragraphs? (I'm glad it didn't, but the
answer to this question might help me avoid that in the future).

 

[Stefan Blom]

Only the built-in headings can be promoted and demoted in Outline view (in a
predictable way). For custom styles, you have to explicitly apply desired
one, using the Style box on the Formatting toolbar or the Styles and
Formatting pane.

What you can do is attach custom styles to an outline-numbered list; then
you can change list levels by using Alt+Shift+Left/Right arrow.

Actually, even stranger is that when I use the Demote button rather
than Tab, paragraph appears to demote by shifting right, and the
Outline toolbar shows that the outline level changed from 1 to 2.
However, the style is still Company Level 1, and opening up the panels
to modify the style shows that the paragraph's outline level is still
1 (not 2, as shown in the Outline toolbar).

I was concerned that this unintended and ambiguous change to the
style's outline level would propagate throughout the document (I like
to enable Automatic Update), but it did not.

What happens is that an outline level is applied as direct formatting to the
text paragraph. This does not affect the style. You can reset the selected
text to the paragraph settings of the style by pressing Ctrl+Q.

 

[Mister.Fred.Ma]

Only the built-in headings can be promoted and demoted in Outline view (in a
predictable way). For custom styles, you have to explicitly apply desired
one, using the Style box on the Formatting toolbar or the Styles and
Formatting pane.

What you can do is attach custom styles to an outline-numbered list; then
you can change list levels by using Alt+Shift+Left/Right arrow.





What happens is that an outline level is applied as direct formatting to the
text paragraph. This does not affect the style. You can reset the selected
text to the paragraph settings of the style by pressing Ctrl+Q.

Thank you, Stefan. I think rather than delve into outline-numbered
lists, I'll simply enable the use of native Word heading styles, then
convert them to corporate template headings when the document is
mature enough.

 

[Stefan Blom]

OK, thank you for the feedback.

FWIW, note that you can modify the built-in heading to suits the needs of
your company.

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Thank you, Stefan. I think rather than delve into outline-numbered
lists, I'll simply enable the use of native Word heading styles, then
convert them to corporate template headings when the document is
mature enough.

Addendum:
http://shaunakelly.com/word/numbering/UseBuiltInHeadingStyles.html

 

[Mister.Fred.Ma]

OK, thank you for the feedback.

FWIW, note that you can modify the built-in heading to suits the needs of
your company.

The thought did occur to me. I decided to simply format the native
headings in any reasonable fashion rather than completely replace
corporate headings. I strongly suspect that there are macros that
refer to the corporate headings, and I'd have to know much more about
Word and the template deal with that.

 

[Mister.Fred.Ma]

Addendum:http://shaunakelly.com/word/numbering/UseBuiltInHeadingStyles.html

Thank you, Daiya.