First of all, some information on the general uses of Word outlines. Word outlines involve allocating paragraphs to different levels. So a main heading might be level 1, the sub-heading level 2, sub-subheading level 3 and so on to level 9. Standard paragraphs of text would not have a level, but would be ‘body’ text. Once these levels are established, they can be used to quickly re-arrange a document or to automatically create a table of contents. In addition, and with particular relevance to our numbering issue, they can be used to automatically create and maintain numbering throughout an entire document.

Outlines and numbering

As shown by the animation, the levels are linked to specific numbering formats, so that a level one paragraph will be numbered 1., 2. etc, whilst level 2 will be 1.1,1.2 and level three 1.1.1, 1.1.2. We have achieved this by modifying the built in ‘Heading’ styles to incorporate outline numbering. Note that the top three levels of built in heading style each have a default keyboard shortcut:

The method of working with styles has changed slightly from Word XP onwards. In the most recent versions of Word, styles can be viewed in the ‘task pane’ and can also be selected for modification by clicking the drop-down button that appears to the right of the selected style when you hover over it in the task pane. The drop-down includes the ‘Modify’ option which opens the style dialog – press the ‘Format’ button to change the format of the style. In Word 2000 and before, you choose Format, Style from the menu to open the style dialog and then click the ‘Modify’ button, and then the ‘Format’ button to change your style. Here are the settings for our ‘Heading 1’ style in Word 2007:

Note that it is set to be ‘Outline numbered’ at level 1. To review or change the numbering in versions of Word prior to 2007, choose Format, and then ‘Numbering’ and for outline numbering choose the ‘Outline numbering’ tab then click on the ‘Customize’ button.

Word 2007 – Home-Paragraph, ‘Multilevel List’ button dropdown, then choose the list closest to what you want then click on ‘Define new Multilevel list…’)

Click on the ‘More/Less’ button to display the full details, the screens are organised slightly differently between the different versions, but you should find all the same elements are there.

You can allocate styles to each of the required levels. Click on the outline level in the ‘Preview’ or ‘Level’ box and then, in the ‘Link Level to style’ box, choose the appropriate heading style. You can set all the level/style links from the customize screen of the ‘Heading 1′ style.

Table of contents

One of the advantages of using outline numbering is the ease with which you can add a table of contents to your document. Just choose Insert-Reference-Index and Tables (Word 2007: References-Table of Contents-Insert Table of Contents…) then, from the ‘Table of Contents’ tab, choose how many levels to include in the table and how it should be formatted.

Once created, the table of contents can be updated by right-clicking anywhere within it and choosing ‘Update field’. Alternatively, you can set your print options so that all fields in a document are updated prior to it being printed. Choose Tools, Options then click on the Print tab (Word 2007: Word Options-Display-Printing Options) and check that ‘Update fields before printing’ is selected.

Cross references

Outline numbering also makes it easy to insert cross-references which can be updated automatically. Click where in the document you want to insert the cross-reference then go to Insert-Reference-Cross Reference (Word 2007: References-Cross-reference). Select the ‘Numbered item’ option from the ‘Reference type’ list, and ‘Paragraph number’ from the ‘Insert Reference to:’ list. You can then choose the item that you want to cross-refer to and click click the ‘Insert’ button. Word will insert a reference to the paragraph number that will be updated if the numbers change. Well sort of. Actually the number won’t be updated until you use the ‘update field’ command on the cross-reference field, or on a selection that includes the field. This isn’t necessarily as bad as it sounds. You can select the whole document (CTRL-A) and then use the update field shortcut key ‘F9’ to update all the fields in the document in one go or set the ‘Update fields before printing’ option as described above.

Coping with paragraph numbering is a common cause of problems and irritation in Word. Whilst Word’s automatic numbering will cope adequately with simple lists, once things get more involved and multi-level numbering is required, things can quickly get out of hand. Our usual advice in these situations is to use Word’s ‘Outline numbering’ facility to cope with the numbers and formatting. A recent query from one of our clients who was setting up a ‘Letter of Engagement’ template, incorporating several levels of paragraph numbering, led us to investigate the whole area in a bit more depth – and to discover a useful – and vital – feature we were previously unaware of.

So in this short series we will look at the whole subject of numbering in Word.

Simple numbered lists

First of all, let’s look at simple numbered lists and some possible complications.

If we start a numbered list by typing:

1. First item

when we press ‘Return’ at the end, Word will (by default) automatically assume we are creating a numbered list, and turn on automatic numbering for us.

1. First item

This has the effect of starting each new paragraph with a number, and also setting the formatting of the paragraph to use a combination of an indent and a hanging indent. A hanging indent causes all lines of the paragraph – with the exception of the first line to be indented:

1. First item
2. This is the second item which is longer than one line long and should wrap onto the second line hopefully

As we can see in the above example, item number two wraps onto the second line, and instead of the text lining up with the number, it lines up with the text of the line above. The indent positions can most easily be seen on the horizontal ruler (use the View, Ruler option to turn it on if it is not visible):

There are two indent ‘pointers’ on the ruler. The top one controls the indent of the first line of the paragraph – as you can see in this example, it is set to indent the first line by 0.63cm. The lower pointer controls the indent of all the other lines in the paragraph – in this case it is set at about 1.26cm.

This causes the first line of the paragraph – containing the number, to start from 0.63cm, whilst all the other lines start from 1.26cm. We can also see this via the Format, Paragraph, Indents and Spacing screen:

Here you can see the combination of the ‘full’ left indent, and the ‘Special’ hanging indent.

It is possible to set the indent positions by dragging the indent pointers along the ruler with the mouse. However, this makes it very difficult to align other paragraphs precisely. It is generally better to use the Format, Paragraph screen shown above, or to use the following toolbar icons or keyboard shortcuts:

Control + m	Increase full left indent by 1.27cm
Control + shift + m	Decrease full left indent by 1.27cm
Control +t	Increase hanging indent by 1.27cm
Control + shift + t	Decrease hanging indent by 1.27cm

Issues

Simple as automatic numbering seems, there are some potential problems: firstly, how do we stop?

1. First item
2. This is the second item which is longer than one line long

If we only have two items in our list, Word will give us number three. To revert to a normal paragraph, you can either press ‘Return’ twice, but this will give you an additional blank line, or press the ‘Backspace’ key twice. Alternatively, you can use the keyboard shortcut to return any paragraph to the ‘default’ normal style:

Control+shift+n

This leads us on to issue two, spacing between the lines of our list, or including multiple paragraphs for one number. As we mentioned above, pressing return twice cancels the automatic numbering. This causes problems if we want additional space between each line of our list, and we want to add that space by including blank lines. Again, there are several ways around this. Perhaps the best is to set the paragraph spacing you require using the Format, Paragraph, Indents and Spacing screen described above. The ‘Spacing’ section of this screen allows you to set a Before and After spacing for each paragraph. In our example we are using a 6pt (about half a line) spacing ‘After’ each of our paragraphs. The keyboard shortcut ‘Control+0′ (zero) will toggle a 12pt ‘Before’ spacing on or off.

Alternatively, instead of pressing an extra ‘Return’ to add a blank line, we could use ‘Shift+return’ instead. This inserts a blank line, without starting a new paragraph, so it doesn’t signal the end of automatic numbering in Word. However there is an issue with Shift+return. If you are using full justification, a line ending with a shift+return will spread the words across the line, regardless of how few there are:

Many Word users find the automatic numbering feature to be more trouble than it is worth. If you want to turn it off and sort out your own numbering, go to Tools, AutoCorrect Option and select the ‘AutoFormat As You Type’ tab. You can then deselect the ‘Automatic numbered lists’ option:

In Word XP and later versions you can also use one of the ‘Smart Tag’ options to turn this option off.

Next time

In the next part of the series we’ll start looking at multi-level numbered lists.

In a way, I’m finding getting to grips with Office 2007 at bit like one of those old-fashioned adventure games where you blunder around in a dark maze and then occasionally triumphantly find something you’ve been looking for for ages. Help is a bit like the cryptic clues you used to get. Great fun, but not currently helping my productivity a great deal…

A more standard question is how to include space for the headers and footers of preprinted letterhead stationery on page 1 only. This can be done by ensuring that in the Layout section of File, Page Setup, the ‘Different first page’ option is selected. This allows you to set up empty headers and footers on page one of the right size to allow for the letterhead but, because of the ‘Different first page’ option, they will not appear on subsequent pages.

The ‘continued…’ question is not so straightforward. The headers and footers for the letterhead are required on page one, whether there is one page or many pages, but as we have said, the ‘continued…’ should only be included when a second page is needed. After a fair amount of thought, the following solution came to mind. Set up the ‘Different first page’ option as before, and this time, in the appropriate position of the header or footer insert a Word ‘IF’ field. The IF should check whether the number of pages in the document is greater than 1 and if so, include ‘continued…’, and if not omit the word.

The Word field should look something like this:

Be very careful when entering the Word field – forgetting a space or getting the syntax wrong in any other way will probably stop it working properly.

If you are not very familiar with using Word fields, the best method of inserting an IF field is probably to use the Insert, Field option in two stages.

First use Insert, Field to insert the IF field. Don’t worry about calculating the number of pages at this stage, but instead just type in a placeholder – for example the word ‘pages’:

i.e.

IF pages > 1 “continued….” “”

The IF field compares two ‘expressions’ and then prints one item of text if the comparison is evaluated as ‘true’ or a different item of text if it is ‘false’.

In fact, in this case because we don’t need anything printed if the result is false we could omit the ‘FalseText’ altogether:

IF pages > 1 “continued….”

Then right click on the resulting field result, and choose Toggle Field Codes to show the underlying code. Double Click on the word ‘pages’ to select it, then go to Insert, Field again and this time use the field DocProperty, Pages:

Now select the entire field, right click, and choose Toggle Field Codes again to toggle back to displaying the result of the field.

Finally, to make sure the field result is recalculated every time the document is printed, set the ‘Update field’ option in the Tool, Options, Print screen:

To do this, position the cursor immediately before the place where the landscape section is to begin and choose File, Page Setup. In the ‘margins’ section, set the orientation to ‘landscape’ and from the ‘Apply to’ list choose ‘This point forward’:

If you now look at a multi-page preview of your document you will see that the pages after the current cursor position are now in landscape orientation:

If you have your ‘non-printing’ characters turned on, then you will see the section break that has been automatically inserted:

If you need the document to revert back to portrait after the landscape section, you will need to click at the end of the landscape pages and use File, Page Setup to create another portrait section again from ‘this point forward’.