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Old 10-19-2004, 04:33 PM   #1
winwintoo
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MS Word - Bullets and Numbering trick...

Well not a trick really, but a feature that I didn't know about and just in case I'm not the last person in the world to discover it, I thought I'd share.

Of course everyone knows that if you type a number followed by a period and a space and then some text and then hit enter, Word assumes that you're making a numbered list and starts the next line with "2." BUT, did you know that if you start a line with a * and follow it with some text and then hit enter, Word will assume you're making a bulleted list and turn the "*" into a bullet and start the next line with a bullet?

Also (and this is where it gets exciting) if you're going along and you want some indented points under #3, just hit enter a second time to break out of numbering, then type an "a)" follow it with some text and hit enter, Word will indent the line and start the next line with "b)"

You can indent points in a bulleted list by using "-" for indented points.

This works with lots of combinations of numbers and characters. For numbering like 1, followed by 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 2, 2.1 etc. Word will keep track of the numbers correctly, but doesn't indent them - might just be my settings.

I don't know how many hours I've wasted, fighting with bullets and numbering dialog boxes when I didn't need to

Margaret
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Old 10-19-2004, 05:25 PM   #2
CAlvarez
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A lot of these smart features have been snuck into the Office apps while we weren't looking. I've fought the hard way many times, since I started using it so long ago when it didn't have these features. New users often teach me things like this. Moral of the story: It's worth reading the "what's new" for upgrades.
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Old 10-19-2004, 05:40 PM   #3
yellow
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[Not a Help Request, moving to OS Xperiences]
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Old 11-05-2004, 02:43 PM   #4
black0
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Quote:
Also (and this is where it gets exciting) if you're going along and you want some indented points under #3, just hit enter a second time to break out of numbering, then type an "a)" follow it with some text and hit enter, Word will indent the line and start the next line with "b)"

Or, you can just hit tab and it will indent for you. Shift+Tab will reverse this.

What's more, you can even type in the wrong number/letter and Word will correct it for you. I do this if I want to pick up the thread of an outline after some normal text and I can't remember which number I'm on.

[I write a lot of outlines in Word.]
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Old 11-11-2004, 05:20 PM   #5
kungfumath
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I hate the outline feature. It never seems to do exactly what I want it to. In fact it seems to figure out what style I want and purposefully pick a different style. This means I spend more time fixing my doc from what Word did to it than actually writing the doc.

I've found that it's easier just to turn off the automated formatting and just do it myself. But then I learned it doing it myself. I just go faster that way.
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Old 11-11-2004, 10:01 PM   #6
Phil St. Romain
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I'm using Word more and more and appreciating its power. Of course, knowing how to tap into that is another question, especially for those of us who don't generally frequent user manuals.
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