As you have noticed, if you base a style on an outline numbered one,
numbering will work as expected as long as you don't try to modify it
for the child style. What happens, as soon as you try to make any
modifications to the outline number (including changing font
attributes) of the child style, is that the parent style will be
kicked out of the numbering scheme and, accordingly, lose its
numbering.
I don't claim to have technical knowledge of why this happens, but if
you want to get a philosophical explanation, I think it helps to
consider what happens when you modify (say) the font size of a child
style. Exactly as expected, the child no longer derives the font name
from the parent style; that aspect of the child has been detached from
the parent.
Similarly, changing number properties adds that data to the child
style. But why is it removed from the parent? I think there are two
things to consider here: (a) An outline list template (outline
numbering scheme) level can only have a single paragraph style linked
to it, and (b) Word has to deal with a *single* list template. In
other words, Word has a single list template and a list template level
with room for only one style; and that's the root of the problem. When
you think about it, it (almost) makes sense to act the way Word does
in this situation.
Anyway, the consequence of Word's behavior is that if you want to use
inheritance when numbering is involved, for a given attribute, you
must choose one of the following: (a) let the numbering scheme
determine the attribute of the outline number for both styles or (b)
for each of the two styles, let the style determine the attribute of
the number.
In other words, the only way you can make the outline number of Para2
not to be bold and the number of Heading 4 to be bold is to specify
that, with regards to the bold attribute, Para2 should use the same
setting as for the text of Para2 attributes:
1. First make sure that the Heading 4 style does not have the bold
attribute set explicitly for its outline number: Click the Font button
in the Customize Outline Numbered List dialog box and see if "Bold" is
selected. If it is, select and delete the option in the dialog box.
Click OK multiple times to close all dialog boxes.
Note that any modifications to an outline numbering scheme must be
made from the top-level style. For details, see:
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/numbering/OutlineNumbering.html.
2. Modify (from the Modify Style dialog box) the font of the Para2
style *not* to include the bold attribute.
3. Modify the font of the Heading 4 style to include the bold
attribute.
A better approach for using the same numbering across different
paragraph styles is to use LISTNUM fields. If you don't need to
include higher levels for the numbering of a specific level, the same
thing can more easily be accomplished with SEQ fields. If you want to
look into this approach, you can start reading about these fields in
Word Help. You can then return to the newsgroup with questions, if
necessary.
