Renumber in Word vX

[Norm]

Hi Norm:

Yes.

1) Select all of the paragraphs.

2) Click the Numbering button.

John:

I think this "may" help but I can't find the "Numbering button." :-(

Assume it is staring at me.

Thanks

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

I think this "may" help but I can't find the "Numbering button." :-(

Assume it is staring at me.

If you're in Word 2004, and have the Formatting Palette open, it's in the
"Bullets and Numbering" pane of the Formatting Palette: click the arrow to
open that pane. The Numbering button is the one with "1 2 3" (vertically) on
it. If you don't have the Formatting Palette open, you can open it by
clicking the button with the "A" on it near the right end of the Standard
Toolbar. The Formatting Palette in 2004 is really very good and useful to
keep open.

I'm starting to forget Word X but I think the Numbering and Bullet buttons
may have been on a larger, general pane of the Formatting Palette rather
than on a separate closeable Bullets and Numbering pane. I may be wrong.
Either way, it looked the same (1 2 3) and was there somewhere.

Both 2004 and X: If you really hate the Formatting Palette and always keep
it closed, instead open the Formatting Toolbar via View/Toolbars/Formatting.
The is the "old" way, as in pre-X versions of Word, which you'd be familiar
with from v5.1a. This toolbar may have been open by default in older
versions of Word, but is closed by default now sine the Palette has
everything. The same Numbering button (1 2 3) is on the Formatting Toolbar.

--
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[Norm]

If you're in Word 2004, and have the Formatting Palette open, it's in the
"Bullets and Numbering" pane of the Formatting Palette: click the arrow to
open that pane. The Numbering button is the one with "1 2 3" (vertically) on
it. If you don't have the Formatting Palette open, you can open it by
clicking the button with the "A" on it near the right end of the Standard
Toolbar. The Formatting Palette in 2004 is really very good and useful to
keep open.

I'm starting to forget Word X but I think the Numbering and Bullet buttons
may have been on a larger, general pane of the Formatting Palette rather
than on a separate closeable Bullets and Numbering pane. I may be wrong.
Either way, it looked the same (1 2 3) and was there somewhere.

Both 2004 and X: If you really hate the Formatting Palette and always keep
it closed, instead open the Formatting Toolbar via View/Toolbars/Formatting.
The is the "old" way, as in pre-X versions of Word, which you'd be familiar
with from v5.1a. This toolbar may have been open by default in older
versions of Word, but is closed by default now sine the Palette has
everything. The same Numbering button (1 2 3) is on the Formatting Toolbar.

OP here.

I'm using Word vX.

Found the Pallette. And that 'seems' to do what I want if I change the
styles associated with it. It defaults to an indent, etc and all want it
to do is renumber.

Thanks for the tip.

 

[John McGhie]

Yep It's right in the middle of your Formatting Toolbar at the top of
your screen. It has the numbers "1,2,3," shown vertically on it. If you
hover your mouse pointer over it, a bubble will spring up with "Numbering"
on it.

Now, I'm getting a little frustrated here. I suggested to you, two or three
times, that you should look in the Microsoft Word Help. Now, I know you
have not done this, otherwise you would already have had the answer to that
question!

There's a Help menu at the top of your screen. Click it, choose "Word
Help", Click the Search button on the top bar of the Help window, then type
the word "Numbering" into the "What are you searching for...?" box. Press
Enter. One of the topics that appears is named " Add bullets or numbering
to lists".

Read it. It shows a picture of the Numbering button.

Sorry if I sound a little exasperated But I am! I really want to help
you, but I need you to participate in the process by trying the things we
suggest.

Hope this helps

John:

I think this "may" help but I can't find the "Numbering button." :-(

Assume it is staring at me.

Thanks

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Norm]

Yep It's right in the middle of your Formatting Toolbar at the top of
your screen. It has the numbers "1,2,3," shown vertically on it. If you
hover your mouse pointer over it, a bubble will spring up with "Numbering"
on it.

Hope this helps

Thanks, that helps.

Not sure how I missed it. Old eyes or my new Mac's resolution.

I must admit that I had gotten so frustrated trying to use Help for
setting default fonts in envelopes and for this renumbering of a plain
text list that I only focused on Help's directions to use Numbering in
the Format menu. Sorry, my oversight.

Appreciate the help.

 

[Norm]

Hi Norm:

Yes.

1) Select all of the paragraphs.

2) Click the Numbering button.

That will do it, however, there are some problems you can get.

A) The numbers may not be "numbers", they may be typed text. See if you
can select one of the paragraphs and include the number in the selection
highlight. If you can, it's not "numbered". The number is a "character"
and Word cannot distinguish it from the text, let alone change it.

Often, if you click the Numbering button twice, Word will remove that number
on the second click. If it can. A third click will then apply the numbering
properly. This sounds like your problem if you have double numbers at the
front of the paragraph.

If you have a mixture of typed numbers and automatic numbers, that will give
you some numbers that will change properly, and some that won't change. You
need to get the typed numbers out of the way so Word can add automatic
numbering.

If you user Format>Style>List Number and click Apply, you apply style-based
numbering, which is more reliable and adaptable that the format>bullets and
Numbering kind.

Having chosen a numbering style you like, the Numbering button will apply
that in future each time: it applies the last numbering used on each click.

Hope this helps

John:

I now tried the numbering button several times on the document in
question.

It always adds new numbers to all the paragraphs. But it does renumber
so they are correctly sequential.

When I originally created the paragraphs, in Word 5.1a, I just typed the
paragraph number, a period and a space. I think this matches what you
described is a "character" not a number. When I select the whole line
the style reads "Normal".

So, I guess in Word vX, it will not renumber those paragraphs in the
correct order unless I have used Numbering to begin with. If I had, then
it would renumber sequentially and not add new numbers.

Do I have your explanation for that correct?

I've never used auto-numbering because my lists are usually quite short,
and I don't even know if Word 5.1a had it and if I did I never learned
it. So I would just manually number paragraphs.

I was going to keep doing that as I now begin creating documents in Word
vX. But I gather your advice would be to create a Custom list format
that I like in Bullets and Numbering and use it when I want to number a
paragraph/list. Is that correct? In which case, I should Customize the
Numbering to what I want and then use either the drop down or the
Numbering button. (I'll read more in Help on the Numbering button as to
what it does versus the drop down. )

Thanks for all this help. I do appreciate.

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Norm:

I now tried the numbering button several times on the document in
question.

It always adds new numbers to all the paragraphs. But it does renumber
so they are correctly sequential.

When I originally created the paragraphs, in Word 5.1a, I just typed the
paragraph number, a period and a space. I think this matches what you
described is a "character" not a number. When I select the whole line
the style reads "Normal".

So, I guess in Word vX, it will not renumber those paragraphs in the
correct order unless I have used Numbering to begin with. If I had, then
it would renumber sequentially and not add new numbers.

Do I have your explanation for that correct?

Yes, that is exactly correct.

The "Bullets" button and the "Numbering" button on the Formatting toolbar
have a built-in feature. If they recognise normal text as a numbering
sequence, they will indeed remove it for you and replace it with automatic
numbering. To get this to work, you need to have the whole list selected.

Also, if you have Tools>AutoCorrect>Auto Format as you type... Turned on,
Word will automatically "guess" that you want numbering when you type the
second numbered item in a numbered list, remove the text and apply automatic
numbering in its place.

The automatic numbering will be formatted as your manual numbering was.
Since you never know exactly what this mechanism is going to give you, we
normally advise you to turn it OFF. Go to Tools>AutoCorrect> Autoformat as
you type... And turn OFF everything in the top and bottom section of the
dialog.

I've never used auto-numbering because my lists are usually quite short,
and I don't even know if Word 5.1a had it and if I did I never learned
it. So I would just manually number paragraphs.

Yes, it had it, but it was nowhere near as smart as the current
implementation. Which means it worked reliably every time

I was going to keep doing that as I now begin creating documents in Word
vX. But I gather your advice would be to create a Custom list format
that I like in Bullets and Numbering and use it when I want to number a
paragraph/list. Is that correct?

My advise to get you started would be to use the pre-build sample that comes
closest to what you want.

In which case, I should Customize the
Numbering to what I want and then use either the drop down or the
Numbering button. (I'll read more in Help on the Numbering button as to
what it does versus the drop down. )

Yes, you should, But you should use Format>Style>Modify to customise the
List Number style to do what you want. Then when you want numbering you
need only apply List Number style.

Numbering define as part of a style and applied by applying the style is a
lot more controllable and reliable, and it's also easier to use.

If you have only one kind of numbering, you can use the Numbering button on
the toolbar to automatically apply the most-recently used numbering style
each time. Since you only have one, that's the one it will apply.

Hope this helps

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Norm]

Hi Norm:



Yes, that is exactly correct.

The "Bullets" button and the "Numbering" button on the Formatting toolbar
have a built-in feature. If they recognise normal text as a numbering
sequence, they will indeed remove it for you and replace it with automatic
numbering. To get this to work, you need to have the whole list selected.

Also, if you have Tools>AutoCorrect>Auto Format as you type... Turned on,
Word will automatically "guess" that you want numbering when you type the
second numbered item in a numbered list, remove the text and apply automatic
numbering in its place.

The automatic numbering will be formatted as your manual numbering was.
Since you never know exactly what this mechanism is going to give you, we
normally advise you to turn it OFF. Go to Tools>AutoCorrect> Autoformat as
you type... And turn OFF everything in the top and bottom section of the
dialog.


Yes, it had it, but it was nowhere near as smart as the current
implementation. Which means it worked reliably every time


My advise to get you started would be to use the pre-build sample that comes
closest to what you want.


Yes, you should, But you should use Format>Style>Modify to customise the
List Number style to do what you want. Then when you want numbering you
need only apply List Number style.

Numbering define as part of a style and applied by applying the style is a
lot more controllable and reliable, and it's also easier to use.

If you have only one kind of numbering, you can use the Numbering button on
the toolbar to automatically apply the most-recently used numbering style
each time. Since you only have one, that's the one it will apply.

Hope this helps

OP here.


Thanks much for answering all the questions in my last post. Very
helpful.

I'll now try your suggestion for modifying the List Number style.

Appreciate the help.

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Norm:

You're welcome: hang around here, Numbering is a complex subject and we can
help a lot. That's what we're here for

Cheers

OP here.


Thanks much for answering all the questions in my last post. Very
helpful.

I'll now try your suggestion for modifying the List Number style.

Appreciate the help.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Norm]

Hi Norm:

You're welcome: hang around here, Numbering is a complex subject and we can
help a lot. That's what we're here for

Cheers

Appreciate. I'll hang around.

Given that I'm both older in years, more mature , and younger with
Word vX, I have multiple challenges so I can always use the help.

Thanks.



BTW, I have a feeling that this is an easy one for you to point me in a
direction:

Since as you know I'm having challenges learning Word vX and sometimes
want to return to 5.1a, it may be foolish of me to ask.....but should I
look at Word 2004? I haven't looked at it at all so know nothing about
the changes nor about how it is sold (separately or in a Office
package). But I'm always curious. Thanks.

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Norm:

First of all, you young whipper-snapper, you are probably younger than I
(and thus more unforgivable...)

Word vX was a reasonable first attempt at Word for Unix. But like Word 97
on the PC, they learned a lot from it Office vX was really rushed to
market under considerable pressure from Apple, because everyone knew OS X
would go nowhere until there was a substantial office suite available for
it. As soon as Microsoft committed, Apple knew that all the other
substantial software vendors would start developing for OS X/Unix.

Word 2004 is a very much better application. There are some nice new
features, not the least of which is full Unicode support, which for the
first time gets rid of the "can't get this or that character" problem we
were plagued with. Furthermore, the overall stability and performance of
the product is substantially improved.

The only downside is that Word 2004 is quite a bit more power-hungry than
its predecessor. If your machine has less than 512 MB of RAM or less than 1
GHz of processor, you may wish to delay the upgrade until you can throw a
bit more hardware into the mix, otherwise you may find Word sluggish on long
documents.

I think you will find that you have "trouble", both with Word and your
documents, until you upgrade. Obviously, you "can" use Word vX
successfully, and people do. And I would expect one more Service Release
for Word vX, which will improve its stability a bit. But it will never do
full Unicode, or any of the other things the new one does. I regard Unicode
as the most compelling new feature: once you have it, nobody can ever send
you a document in English containing characters you can't handle.

Now if you are going to upgrade (and you qualify for upgrade pricing) then
it would be madness not to go for the full Office suite. Each of the
products is packaged separately, but the price you pay for each is about
half what you would pay to get all four. And the others are useful! You
may not do many spreadsheets, but when you do, it's nice to have Excel in
the dock for the purpose: there's no spreadsheet out there Excel can't
handle. You may not do presentations very often, but if you need to display
one, PowerPoint is your weapon. And Entourage is probably the nicest of the
full-featured email programs around, with the added benefit of being a very
good News Client for simple usage.

There are three packages you can look at: Word as a stand-alone. I really
wouldn't do that, as mentioned above. Having a later version of Word than
you have of all the other applications is asking for instability on your
computer. There's Office Standard, which gives you the four major
applications working together as a single unit. That's what I would
recommend.

If you have a powerful computer, you may wish to consider Office
Professional. That comes bundled with Virtual PC 7 and an included copy of
Windows XP. Not of much interest to you if you do not already have a supply
of PC software. But if you do, then it's a very good investment. I keep a
copy of Word 2003 loaded on this Mac. I just let it sleep quietly in the
background until I need it. There are a few things you cannot do well in
Mac Word that PC Word does better. Normal users never miss those features,
but I do a lot of VBA development, and that's a real weak point of Mac Word
and a strength of Word 2003. I also use FrontPage, which is not available
for the Mac, and CorelDRAW, which they stopped making for the Mac. VPC 7
has not been released yet: I don't know exactly when it will be, but it's
getting very close. Worth waiting for: it will be quite a bit faster on a
modern Mac than VPC 6, the current version. It's also the only one that
will run on a G5 processor.

To run VPC successfully, you really need at least a gigabyte of RAM in your
computer, and a 1 GHz processor. That said, I wrote half a book in Word
2003 on a 400 MHz iBook with 384 MB of memory. Slow, but it worked.

So a bit depends on your hardware: if you have a slower machine, substantial
applications in VPC will be too slow for day-to-day use. If you have a dual
G5 at 2 GHz (I wish....) you can work all day in PC applications very
comfortably.

Hope this helps

Appreciate. I'll hang around.

Given that I'm both older in years, more mature , and younger with
Word vX, I have multiple challenges so I can always use the help.

Thanks.



BTW, I have a feeling that this is an easy one for you to point me in a
direction:

Since as you know I'm having challenges learning Word vX and sometimes
want to return to 5.1a, it may be foolish of me to ask.....but should I
look at Word 2004? I haven't looked at it at all so know nothing about
the changes nor about how it is sold (separately or in a Office
package). But I'm always curious. Thanks.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410

 

[Norm]

Hi Norm:

First of all, you young whipper-snapper, you are probably younger than I
(and thus more unforgivable...)


So a bit depends on your hardware: if you have a slower machine, substantial
applications in VPC will be too slow for day-to-day use. If you have a dual
G5 at 2 GHz (I wish....) you can work all day in PC applications very
comfortably.

Hope this helps

John:

We won't try to resolve the age issue but I am surely "younger" with
Word vX and seemingly Word challenged on versions beyond 5.1a.

Thanks for the reviews of options. Very helpful and I appreciate.

I'll take a look at 2004 Office. My main Mac is 1GHz and has 1GB memory.

Thanks for all the help from "Down Under".

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Norm:

Well, since they just put it on sale, I guess I can talk about it now

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/office2004/howtobuy/howtobuy.aspx?pid=
professional

I put in the VPC 7.0.1 upgrade overnight, and I can tell you that VPC 7 is
quite useable on a 1 GHz Mac with 1GB of main memory There's a useful
performance enhancement in applying the update.

While writing this, I am applying the CorelDRAW 12 Update 1, which is a
chunky little 16 MB. VPC is running happily multitasking with Mac OS, and
the PC is doing some relatively heavy hauling. I am quite impressed

Best Regards

John:

We won't try to resolve the age issue but I am surely "younger" with
Word vX and seemingly Word challenged on versions beyond 5.1a.

Thanks for the reviews of options. Very helpful and I appreciate.

I'll take a look at 2004 Office. My main Mac is 1GHz and has 1GB memory.

Thanks for all the help from "Down Under".

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 4 1209 1410