need help with Numbering - Restart Numbering not working

[bmurphy]

I've created two essentially identical paragraph styles, named Number
1 and Number 2, that I use for numbered lists at many places in a 250
page document.

For some reason the right click "restart numbering" feature is not
working for style Number 2. It simply does nothing. And in the
Bullets and Numbering dialog the "restart numbering" radio button is
grayed out.

Can anyone suggest why this is happening?

Style Number 1 is working fine, with many number restarts throughout
the file.

If anyone wants to see this, a short version of the file (200k) is at
www.xlrotor.com/temp/xlrotor_manual.doc
and near the end there's a list that starts at 20 that I can't get to
start at 1.

Thanks,

Brian Murphy
Austin, Texas

 

[Stefan Blom]

If you are using a recent version of Word, you'll find it safer to use the
right-click (context) menu to restart numbering. See
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Numbering/ListRestartFromUI.htm.

If everything else fails, force a restart by inserting a LISTNUM field at
the end of the previous list (that makes use of the Number 2 paragraph
style). See http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Numbering/ListRestartByLISTNUM.htm.

 

[bmurphy]

Thank you very much, Stefan. You are light years ahead of me.

As it turns out, the list formatting is done by macros I am writing.
The source document is a rather large RTF file created by an old
Windows Help authoring took called ForeHelp.

I am not an experienced Word macro writer, and I've been using the
macro recorder heavily. The file comes in with its own numbering
styles that are definitely messed up, and I have been unsuccessful
trying to repair them. So my macro creates two new numbering styles,
and applies them in place of the messed up ones.

Following your URL given below, I need to read through the web pages
about working with numbering in macros. Right now my macros are using
ListGalleries because that is what the macro recorder gave me.

My two numbering styles are presently "paragraph" styles and not
"list" styles. I find that I cannot use the LISTNUM field.

I think I will go back and try to create them as "list" styles, and
see if that clears up the problem.

Creating macros to fix up this document is turning into a much bigger
job than I wanted. Just when I think I'm done, a new problem pops
up. Hopefully, this numbering thing will be the end of it.

Cheers,

Brian

 

[bmurphy]

I have learned one more thing about the misbehaving numbering.

If I go to the spot where the "restart" command doesn't work, and
press "enter" to insert an empty numbered paragraph, then move to the
next paragraph (which had been the first paragraph), I can now apply
the restart command. Then I delete the inserted paragraph. The
result is I've got restart applied where I wanted, and it seems to
behave like it should.

Brian

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

FWIW, I would avoid macros and just used style-based numbering throughout.
The most trouble-free way to restart numbering is to use an outline list
(see http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/numbering/OutlineNumbering.html for
instructions on how to set up almost unbreakable numbering) with a dummy
higher-level style (which can be unnumbered); see
http://word.mvps.org/faqs/numbering/listrestartfromstyle.htm

 

[bmurphy]

Thank you, Suzanne. I am headed out of town for the rest of the week,
but I will check this out when I get back. I am forced to use macros
because of where the document is coming from, but I'm always looking
for a better way to do things.

Brian

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Using a macro to apply the style would at least be a step up.