How do I turn off auto paragraph numbering but keep the para #s?

[Deanna]

I have an existing long agreement with auto paragraph numbering. I want to
turn the auto numbering off but not lose the formating or the numbers
themselves. Can this be done?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Courtesy of Stefan Blom:

To convert autonumbering (paragraph/outline numbering and LISTNUM
fields) to plain text, do the following: Make sure the active
document is the one you want to convert. Then press ALT+F11 to
display the Visual Basic Editor. On the View menu, click
Immediate Window. In the Immediate Window, type

ActiveDocument.ConvertNumbersToText

and press ENTER.

Note that if paragraph/outline numbering was applied with styles,
it isn't completely gone (CTRL+Q will bring it back!) unless you
also clear it from the style definitions.