Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Randomly Resetting Numbering.

Randomly Resetting Numbering

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated October 26, 2023)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


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Nancy requested help in overcoming her frustrations with Word's automatic numbering feature. It seems that the numbers in some of the lists would periodically reset themselves or show other strange behavior problems.

The automatic numbering tool used in Word is one of the most poorly implemented and frustrating tools in the entire program. The problems are so bad that many people even advocate the complete abandonment of the feature, relying instead on manually numbering items in lists. (Believe it or not, that is exactly what is done when WordTips is first created—the numbered steps that are so often used are created manually rather than automatically.) This approach obviously involves quite a bit of additional typing and formatting.

Rather than type in numbers manually, you can also use the SEQ field to number your lists. This takes just a bit of time to set up, but the result can be lists that are semi-dynamic. (Meaning that list elements renumber themselves if you have to reorganize a list.) For more information on the SEQ field, refer to past issues of WordTips.

If you want to try using Word's automatic numbering, then it is best to also use styles to define the appearance of the numbered items that appear in your document. You can create different styles for different types of lists, as well as different styles for the first items in lists and the rest of the items. Styles, of course, provide many other advantages that are beneficial when creating documents. If you share your documents with others, defined styles also help insure that your document will appear more true to your original intent when viewed on another machine.

If you want to learn more about numbering and how to tame the wild beast, you should run (don't walk) to the Word MVP site and read through John McGhie's novella on the topic. Simply visit this page:

https://wordmvp.com/FAQs/Numbering/WordsNumberingExplained.htm

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (1512) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Randomly Resetting Numbering.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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What is 2 + 8?

2017-02-06 13:49:02

Jessica Davis

I use styles to propagate numbering and it works like a charm. You link the style to the numbering level and tell Word when to restart numbering. So all my numbered list start with an style that does get numbered, but rather tells Word to restart the counter. For example, I have style called "procedure" that I apply to the sentence that introduces the steps. This style tells Word to restart the numbering for all numbered styles that follow.


2017-02-04 12:38:51

Craig

A really nice Word site is Shauna Kelly's Word help website. She goes a step further and advises never to use the numbering toolbar button. She also has straight forward instructions for creating an outline numbered list using custom styles. Here's the link:

http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/numbering/numbering2003.html


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