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Having Numbered Lists in Subdocuments Restart their Numbering

Summary: If you have a bunch of subdocuments, and each of those subdocuments contains numbered lists, you may find that you have numbering problems at some point. For instance, when you expand those subdocuments from within a master document. This tip presents two ways you can make sure that numbering starts where you expect. (This tip works with Microsoft Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002, Word 2003, and Word 2007.)

John has a master document with approximately 80 subdocuments in it. About 60 of them contain numbered lists. When he opens the whole thing (outline view | expand documents) the numbers in the numbered lists continue rather than restart. The numbered lists are set using a style from a custom global template based on the standard List Number style. John wonders if there is a way to make sure that the numbered lists restart at 1 rather than continue from the previous list without having to change them manually every time he expands the entire master document.

There are a couple of approaches you could use. First, at the end of each of your documents you could add a LISTNUM field to reset the numbering. The format of the field would be as follows:

{ LISTNUM "NumberDefault" \s0 }

This will set the numbering used for numbered lists back to zero. Depending on your system and your version of Word, you may end up with some visible characters generated by the LISTNUM field. If this is the case, then simply format those characters as hidden text.

Another option is to recognize that Word's built-in automatic numbering is fraught with lots of problems. (These problems are well documented and have been addressed in other issues of WordTips.) Many people abandon the built-in numbering all together and use SEQ fields to implement their list numbering. If you do this, you could use a different sequence for each of your subdocuments, and you would be sure to have just the numbering you wanted.

Tip #3429 applies to Microsoft Word versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

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