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Subject:Still hating Word and numbered headings? From:Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Sat, 20 Aug 2005 09:15:59 -0400
Brian Gordon wondered: <<I created a new template. I then created a new
heading style. I made it a List style, called it Heading 1 num, clicked
OK, and this caused all other heading styles to disappear.>>
Might be a problem that results from the fact that Heading 1 is a
reserved style built into Word. I'm surprised Word let you replace it.
I've never tried replacing it with a different Heading 1, but that
doesn't seem safe and if you did it, it probably represents a bug.
Better bet is to simply redefine the properties of the existing Heading
1.
I'm not sure what you mean by "disappear" or why you have these four
heading styles if they "disappeared", but since Heading 2 and Heading 3
are sometimes defined as "based on" Heading 1, I imagine they'd
suddenly be undefined and uncooperative if you got rid of Heading 1.
Given the names of the headings, I'll bet that you're using Word XP or
2003, which creates new styles based on old ones if you modify an
existing style to override the original definition as you described.
Best bet would be to delete the new styles, leaving only Heading 1, and
modify the style definition directly. If worst comes to worst, delete
the current version of Normal.dot (the Normal template) or (better
still) replace it with a backed up version that hasn't sustained this
damage. When you restart Word, it will create a fresh copy of Normal if
it can't find one, so that's no problem.
And always avoid Word's autonumbering. It's been broken badly since at
least Word 97, and possibly one or two versions earlier. The only
effective way to autonumber in Word is to use an automated version of
sequence {SEQ} codes, as described in the following document:
<http://www.knopf.com/tips/autonumber.html>
I used to think that Microsoft was negligent in not fixing
autonumbering for so long, particularly given how easy it would be to
replace it with an automated version of the {SEQ} codes described in
Dr. Knopf's document, but it suddenly occurs to me that they may share
my antipathy for numbered headings. That is, they may correctly believe
that any hierarchy that requires serious numbering is probably a flawed
hierarchy to begin with. Yeah, that's the ticket! <g>
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