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How do I make a custom ListNum

Anonymous
2020-03-25T18:41:04+00:00

My thanks to Stefan Blom, who has just told me where to find  ListNum in Word 2016. But this led to another problem which I thought it best to ask separately so people needing help will find the answer specific to each problem.

It turns out that the NumberDefault in ListNum is exactly what I want: a numeral in parentheses. But when I pick that it starts re-numbering [starting from (1)] in a document that already has some numbers in it, that got put there back when I was building it in Word 2007, using a special ListNum called "utterancenumber" that I was forced to define since none of the existing defaults had these properties. Someone must has told me how to define it but that was many years ago, and I can't remember how it was done.

Thanks,

Peyton Todd

P. S. It does not seem wise to just let all the numbers in this document be NumberDefault since, presumably if I combine this book chapter with others, that are already full of numbers put there by "utterance number", I would encounter this same problem again.

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  1. Anonymous
    2020-03-25T21:22:19+00:00

    I have been fascinated by fields for years.

    I know of no way to make more fields but it is possible to format one the way you want with the switches you want and save it as an AutoText entry or even a Quick Part Building Block.

    Here is the documentation on the ListNum Field.

    .https://support.office.com/en-us/article/field-codes-listnum-field-557541b1-abb2-4959-a9f2-401639c8ff82?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

    Such an AutoText or Building Block can be brought into a document with a keyboard shortcut or a a key phrase in the name that lets you insert it with the enter key.

    I have the QuickParts menu on my QAT.

    If you want to do any of these, let me know and I will help you with it.

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  2. Anonymous
    2020-03-25T20:54:41+00:00

    Thanks, and I have been hoping to rediscover the instructions with the French horns worn as hats that I used so long ago to set up my headings since I may need a refresher course. It looks like she's improved them over the years, in fact.

    However, unless I'm mistaken they're not what I had in mind with this post. I am looking, rather, for a way to modify the ListNum that one arrives at by Insert > Quick Parts > Field > ListNum. At least as I use them, they are not hierarchical section and sub-section headings, but  simply numbers attached to examples, which - and this is important - are quite independent of what heading they happen to appear under. One uses them as the terminals of links elsewhere in the document. It's true that when one goes to Cross-references, they are listed in their position below the heading number that they happen to reside under, but they are SEQUENTIAL numbers starting at the top of the document and moving downward from there skipping over headings at will.

    It boggles my mind to see how many other 'Fields' there are, of which ListNums is only one!

    Peyton

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-03-25T18:52:04+00:00

    Hi

    Step by step instructions for setting up your numbering can be found here:

    http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/numbering/numbe...

    (Mac version http://web.archive.org/web/20171001085719/http:...)

    This is a link to pages on one or more trusted Word MVP websites. Those pages contain accurate safe information that I think will help you.

    I'm a bit surprised that Stefan did not give you the first link. We are both big proponents of Shauna's method. Probably because you just asked where to find the listnum field. This method may seem a bit of work but not using it for important work is asking for trouble. Once you have it set, you can save a template with it and use that template for new documents where you need good numbering that can survive editing.

    This forum is a user-to-user support forum. I am a fellow user.

    I hope this information helps.

    Please let me know if you have any more questions or require further help.

    You can ask for more help by replying to this post (Reply button below).

    Regards

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  4. Stefan Blom 341.5K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2020-03-25T23:55:07+00:00

    The LISTNUM field comes in three predefined versions, corresponding to the "list names" in the dialog box at Insert > Quick Parts > Field:

    For example, { LISTNUM LegalDefault } produces the "1., 1.1., 1.1.1., ..." multilevel format.

    Word doesn't really offer a way to modify those predefined formats, though. Instead, the strength of the LISTNUM field is that you can add the field (without specifying a list name) in between multilevel-numbered paragraphs so that it becomes part of that multilevel list.

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