Why are outline numbered list limited to 9 levels?

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Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

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Outlines more than four levels are difficult to read and the province of
Government documents. A document with more than 9 levels would be
incomprehensible. What is your thinking here?

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

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Graham,

I would have to disagree with you that an outline 9 0r more levels deep
would be incomprehensible. I would think that it would be very much
dependent upon the intent of the document and its intended document. In the
particular case I am attempting to document the architecture of an object
oriented software module by creating an outline of pseudopodia. (This to be
accompanied by UML diagrams developed in Visio.) The logic of this
particular module easily goes to more than 20 levels deep, and this is not a
particularly complicated module. To an audience of fellow Software
Engineers, I can assure you that the resulting pseudopodia outline would be
completely comprehensible.

In any case, I believe that setting the limit to 9 levels is somewhat
arbitrary, and I believe that Microsoft should not place limits upon users
within its applications unless there is a resource limitation or documented
requirement to do so. Given how buggy the numbered outline seems to be in
Word, perhaps it is in fact a resource limitation that forces the limit to be
9. It seems to me that earlier versions of the MS Word supported more, if
not unlimited, levels when bullets and numbers could be set to multilevel
prior to the advent of the specific numbered outline option. (The numbered
outline may have been available in previous versions, but if it was it was
not the default as it is today; the simple bulleted format was the default
which could be customized to multiple levels.)

If I am correct on the above, then this would seem to be a case of lost
functionality. (A major, "your going to hell" sin in my industry.) In any
case, if Word is not going to support more than 9 levels, why then does
customization dialog present the level selection in a scrollable list control
with all 9 levels visible in the list? The scrollbar is disabled because
there is nothing to scroll to, but it is nonetheless there. If there was not
the intent to support more levels, why then allow the scrollbar to be present
al all! It is very confusing to the user in that it gives the impression that
there may be a circumstance when the scroll bar may be active. (Believe me,
I have spent the better part of a morning looking for just such a
circumstance.) If the Microsoft Word development team did not intend there
to ever be more than 9 levels, then it would have been a simple matter
through code to prevent the listbox from displaying a vertical scroll bar!
(I believe the vertical scrollbar is a holdover from previous versions where
more than 9 levels were supported.)

So, my question still stands... why does MS Word not support more than 9
levels for a numbered outline list? Is it by accident, necessity (a resource
or design limitation), or design (there is actually some literary authority
out there that dictates the number of levels within a numbered outline shall
be 9, and 9 shall be the number of levels within a numbered outline! 10 is
right out!) (My apologies to Monty Python.)

Thanks!

F. James Little
Sr Software Engineer
 
Hello James-

I fully appreciate the points made here, but perhaps Word is not the best
tool for your complex needs.

I am not familiar with an equivalent on the Windows platform, but if you
have access to Macs you may want to take a look at a program called
OmniOutliner Professional. Unlimited Levels is just one of several features
that might be of interest to you... Especially if you need presentation
output. If it is of interest you can look here:

http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnioutliner/

HTH |:>)
 
Taz,

Thanks for the suggestion. If I had a Mac available to me, that would
probably be a pretty good option. Unfortunately, I'm working in an MS shop,
and MS Word is the only word processing/document publication software we have
available to us. The frustration is that I know that this is functionality
that at least at one time was available. (I was doing this same sort of
thing back in 1998/99 on the prevailing version of MS Word at that time.)

Thanks!

F. James Little
Sr. Software Engineer
 
You can have as many level of indents and bullets as you like because there
is no issue with restarting numbering after a certain level. You can apply
any bullet you like to any style you like with any indent you like. You
could even, I imagine, have multiple outline-numbered lists (nested), but
you can't have more than nine levels within a given list.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
I fully appreciate the points made here, but perhaps Word is not the best
tool for your complex needs.
Click to expand...

Because it's not designed to appeal to a narrow and specialized market,
almost by definition. You might want to present the view to your bosses that
you are doing something very particular and being limited to mass-market
software is making your job more difficult.

Anyhow, a reply to one of your multi-posts pointed you here:

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/microsoft.public.word.numbering/msg/d6ba
1d023c888b81?dmode=source-

Which gives a workaround for 18 levels, and possibly offers a way to work
out more.

Multi-post, by the way, means to post separately messages to several groups,
making it difficult to go back and find the answers, and raising the chances
that people will waste their time giving you answers you've already received
elsewhere. It's considered rude in newsgroups, plus it's inefficient.

DM


 
Actually, the two posting were, in this case, an accident. I posted my
question to the General group, not realizing that there was a more specific
group targeted on the topic of my question. As it turns out, virtually no
one addressed the issue on the more focused newsgroup, but rather has
addressed themselves more to the 'General' question. This seems
counter-intuitive to me, but in this case I am glad that fate served to have
place the question in both groups as the feedback has been helpful.

As to the Mass Market issue, I'm afraid that I cannot concede your point.
The functionality we are discussing is functionality which previously
existed, and has been lost. In any case, it is the role of developers to
provide as much functionality as possible within an application as is
possible within the limits of resources and practicality. If there is a
literary resource that authoritatively dictates that an outline should be no
more than 9 levels deep, then please cite it. Otherwise, I would consider
that limit to be whatever limit had been available in previous versions of
Word. The fact that this specific application of a numbered outline was
focused on one particular and unique requirement does nothing to mitigate the
argument that there are no doubt many other 'mass market' applications of
numbered outlines that would require the ability to go beyond 9 levels. The
purpose of software is to enable users, not limit them.

I would also like to express my appreciation to the newsgroup police who,
while having nothing useful to contribute toward actually solving this issue,
were nonetheless diligent in pointing out my transgressions. I apologize
most profusely to all those who were so deeply offended and shall have my
meal card stamped “No Dessert†immediately.

Thanks!

F. James Little
Sr. Software Engineer
 
Suzanne,

Thanks for the reply. I had actually thought of trying to nest the lists,
but when I tried it, I was unable to get it to work... (I'm sure there is
some trick to it.) When I tried, it would continue to treat the nested list
as a continuation of the Parent list, and would not allow any further
indentations to occur.

A reply from Robert to this same question on the Word.Numbering forum
contained a link which may have offered a solution to the nesting issue. If
you know of a simple method using just the interface to nest list, I would
love to hearit!

Thanks again for your help.

F. James Little
Sr. Software Engineer
 
As to the Mass Market issue, I'm afraid that I cannot concede your point.

Well, we're really each making separate points, I think. Yours is about
programming, mine is about profit.
In any case, it is the role of developers to
provide as much functionality as possible within an application
Click to expand...

Sure, agreed.
as is
possible within the limits of resources and practicality.
Click to expand...

And the people in charge of the developers presumably figured that more than
9 levels would not be a profitable use of resources, and told developers to
spend time on something else. MS's bottom line is profit. This doesn't
annoy enough people for them to consider it profitable to implement/keep
implementing, I imagine. If you really want a "why", that's basically what
it boils down to.

You can post "more outline levels" as a newsgroup Suggestion though, and
perhaps other people will come along and vote for it, and then perhaps MS
will consider it a worthwhile feature if it gets enough votes. You would
need to post it as a Suggestion through the MS web interface though, those
are the only posts that might have a chance of getting read. Then send your
entire workgroup the link to vote for it, perhaps?

I would also like to express my appreciation to the newsgroup police who,
while having nothing useful to contribute toward actually solving this issue,
were nonetheless diligent in pointing out my transgressions. I apologize
most profusely to all those who were so deeply offended and shall have my
meal card stamped ³No Dessert² immediately.
Click to expand...
I can't imagine who qualified as newsgroup police other than me, so I
apologize for trying to point you towards a reply you apparently hadn't seen
several hours after it was posted and for trying to explain to someone who
didn't seem to know how newsgroups work. Sorry you didn't find either of
those useful.

DM
 
Really the best place to pursue this inquiry is in the .numbering NG. The
regulars who post there know far more about numbering than I ever will. I
remain skeptical, however, that the functionality you're seeking was ever
available in Word.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
Suzanne,

I strongly believe that Microsoft should come out with an update to fix
this. At Boeing we must write Performance Specifications all the time and to
not have more than 9 levels is impossible to create a spec. Often times are
specs go as deep at 12-13 levels.

I rely on the custom numbering schemes when writing a spec and not having
this feature limits my use of Microsoft Word. I must say that I am rather
disappointed in the reasoning for not making this list larger.

Thanks,

J
 
I'm guessing that the need for more than 9 levels is rare. Most users seldom
need more than 4 or 5 levels, as most. Note that Word's built-in Heading
levels go only from 1 to 9 as well.

That said, almost anything is possible in Word if one is willing to invest
the time/money to setting it up. If your company routinely needs 12-13
numbering levels, and if they're committed to staying with Word, it would
make sense to develop templates that do this for you -- including styles,
tools and macros to make it transparent to the user.
 
Two things - one, isn't it Microsoft's responsability to include this
available option as they need to appeal to many users - and not just limit a
feature because only 60,000 people might need it out of 2 million. Second,
how can you customize styles or templates for automatic outlined numbering
greater than 10 when word is limited to 9?
 
Just another voice in the noise of the crowd: I could definitely use more
levels - stopping at nine (9) is quite limiting for Bill-of-Materials work
and other logical listing purposes.
 
You need more than nine levels of numbering in a single list? Gack! I
wouldn't want to be the one who was trying to figure out the
1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1 level of subheadings.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
 
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