Disable multilevel list in Word 2013?

Hi Doug

I agree with you 100% that "the proper thing to do is to define the styles that you want to use in the document so that to obtain the required formatting, you just apply the appropriate style. ".

But you seem to have missed Drew's question--Drew was learning about multilevel styles, and created one but couldn't delete it once created. I'm sure Drew has learned a lot in the whole process, but no amount of learning what the right way of doing things is, will address the question of how to get rid of the wrongly-done thing created while learning. And that was Drew's question: Not "What's the right way to do it?", but "How do I delete the wrong thing I created while I was learning?"

My point was that Microsoft has provided no easy way to remove multilevel lists once they have been introduced into a document, which, from experience working with students who struggle with numbering in big documents like theses and dissertations, is a big omission. I sometimes see documents with quite a few unnecessary list styles created in the process of trying to get it right. And these just clutter things up, and sometimes the students themselves don't know which one is the right one, and end up incorporating several "competing" lists in one document--you can imagine the nightmare that results from that.

I'm afraid that telling those poor students what the right way to do things is at that moment is akin to kicking them while they're down--what they need is a solution for the mess, not a lesson on how to not create the mess. The lesson is needed, for sure, so that they don't create a mess like this again, but that comes afterwards, and the lesson doesn't clean up the already existing mess.

I find it odd that Microsoft allows you to delete new (i.e., custom) styles that you create, but does not allow you to delete new multilevel lists that you create. Basically, it comes down to a no-mistakes allowed approach (not quite true, but if you're still learning, then mistakes can be more costly than they should). Allowing one to delete multilevel lists would allow one the option of resetting the clock a bit on a document, and starting over again, this time trying to do it the way you said.

But I must comment on what you said as well, as it's not quite that simple. Up until Word 2003, you could set your multilevel lists while modifying your style. This was a clean and efficient process, and allowed for much less confusion. Up until Word 2003, what you said would have covered it.

But then in Word 2007, Microsoft separated out the numbering, so that you could not access the multilevel lists while defining your styles. Even the link you gave from Shauna Kelly's website shows this, with two separate pages for <=2003 vs >=2007. Thus, since Word 2007, defining styles alone give you formatted headings, but it will not give you formatted-and-outline-numbered headings. To get the outline numbering, you now, in addition, have to set up a multilevel list and link it to the styles (sure, some in the gallery are pre-linked, but that only works in the small number of cases where you are 100% happy with the gallery choice).

My point about the XML: Although I have never personally tried this, in theory at least it should be possible to get rid of unwanted multilevel lists by unpacking the word\numbering.xml part from the docx file, deleting the unwanted lists, and repacking the part back into the docx file.

Of course, a VBA (or other) tool could be created to do this, but for more than half a decade now, I have just been wondering why Microsoft doesn't provide this in the interface.

I hope that explains to you where I am coming from and what my intention was. Keep up the good work.

Do the following to turn off numbering in your heading styles: In the Apply Styles pane (Ctrl+Shift+S), type in Heading 1 and click Modify. In the Modify Style dialog box, click Format, and then click Numbering. Click the "None" option and then click OK twice. Repeat the procedure for each heading level. This clears the numbering scheme (list template) completely from your headings.

Note that the above procedure doesn't delete the list template from your document, though. To delete unused list templates, you can copy the whole document, minus the final paragraph mark, into a new document. To show/hide paragraph marks (¶) as well as other nonprinting marks, use the ¶ button on the Home tab.

You need to create Templates that have styles set up in them that a defined in the way that you want them

See the article "How to create numbered headings or outline numbering in your Microsoft Word document" on the following page of the Late Shauna Kelly's website:

http://www.ShaunaKelly.com/word/numbering/OutlineNumbering.html

and some of the other information on that site.