[Originally appeared 1999.]
Last week’s column started out with the simple mission of explaining how to restart paragraph numbering, but left us on the connection between customization of numbering settings and the Windows registry.
Before diving back into the behavior and misbehavior of Word, it helps to restate the business goals for automatic numbering. An organization should be able to publish to its users a set of standard numbering alternatives. The numbering patterns should be linked to a set of styles, generally Heading 1 through Heading 9. Users should be able to apply the numbering patterns consistently throughout the organization, regardless of the computer on which the numbering has been applied.
Further, users should be able to restart numbering within a document, and keep the style application correct. If a document contains one or more numbering restarts, and a different numbering pattern needs to be applied, the document should not lose the numbering restart.
Several of you have written asking whether we could just state some easy advice on proper and accurate use of automatic numbering in Word 97 and Word 2000. An answer (not the only answer), separates numbering application from numbering design and customization. For numbering application, an organization’s experts should prepare a series of templates that contain only the appropriate numbering patterns, linked to styles that have been formatted correctly. General users can apply numbering patterns and related style settings by selecting one of these templates in the Style Gallery. Numbering restart requires some care, probably best supported by a macro. In any case, general users should stay away from use of the Bullets and Numbering dialog’s Outline Numbered tab. There needs to be a troubleshooting guide to deal with difficulties, especially from sharing work with those who haven’t mastered these rules.
Once again, this column won’t finish the subject. The final answer will remain the one in the previous paragraph. We hope the detailed explanation with help explain and justify the advice.
Returning to the perspective of the expert user or developer and the customization of an outline numbered pattern, we must now deal directly with the Bullets and Numbering dialog’s Outline Numbered tab. I have sometimes called this dialog the ListGallery after the name of the Word object with which the dialog is associated. The tab displays 8 windows, of which the upper left one always indicates “None.” The other seven windows display a portion of the settings and formatting for numbering derived from a group of presets stored in the individual user’s Windows Registry. For the curious, in Word 97 they are stored at HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Office\8.0\Word\List Gallery Presets. For Word 2000, the setting is the same, except that 8.0 is replaced by 9.0. Don’t get too excited. The registry entries are a string of digits, not easily decipherable.
There are some oddities (a polite euphemism) in the display of the Outline Numbered dialog. The appearance of the windows depends on the paragraph in the cursor is located. If the windows remain or have been reset to their default values and the cursor is not in a numbered paragraph linked to a style, then the windows in the top row will not have numbering levels linked to styles, but the windows in the bottom level will. If the cursor is in a paragraph at a heading numbering level lower than 1 (say level 4), then all the levels in the windows in the Outline Numbered dialog will appear in the order Current Level (here level 4), Level 1 and Level 2. In the same document, putting the cursor in a paragraph without numbering caused the two windows in the lower right corner of the Outline Numbered dialog to lose their connection to the linked styles.
I could go on, but let’s consider at least some of what happens with the use of the customize function launched from the Outline Numbered dialog.
In the terms described in the column in issue 4.29, drawing strongly on the Word object model, the Customize Outline Numbered List dialog allows users to control nearly all of the properties of the List Levels associated with the ListTemplate assigned to the active window of the ListGallery from which the customize dialog was launched. One can demonstrate this by recording a macro in which such a customization is performed. Take a look at the macro. About four pages of VBA code shows up. Changing any characteristic of any outline level causes Word to rewrite all of the properties of all of the ListLevels associated with the ListTemplate assigned to that gallery position. The built-in programming (but not the dialog (!) can reset the TabPosition property (the Jason Tab behavior). At the end of the macro, Word applies that ListTemplate to the List in which the current paragraph is included.
Feel free to reread the last paragraph a few times. It isn’t easy.
Any time a user changes number formatting through the Customize Outline Numbered List dialog, they rewrite the settings for the connected Window of the ListGallery. This rewriting occurs in the Windows registry for that machine. The application of the revised ListTemplate to the list in the document causes the document to pick up the new settings. This may work properly in a pure single user setting, with a simple document. If there is only one List in the document (no paragraph numbering restarts, among other things), then the new settings can apply correctly. Trouble starts brewing quickly if a user tries to customize numbering settings from work produced by another. If they have previously customized their Outline Numbered settings, it may differ from the organization’s standards, and “corrupt” the document.
All of this behavior helps explain the urgency of the development of numbering formats by those who have mastered these issues, and sharing them through templates and the Style Gallery.
This 1999 article originally appeared in Office Watch.Subscribe to Office Watch free at http://www.office-watch.com/.