Are you using the Document Map? This feature usually tries to "guess"
which paragraphs are headings. A simple work-around is to use the
Outline view instead. For more information, see:

Outline Levels and the Document Map
http://daiya.mvps.org/docmap.htm

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP


"Peter Ide" wrote in message
...
Working on a long doc in Word 2002. Almost every time I open file
and
sometimes just out of the blue (switching Views is one trigger) Word
decides
to "format" or "analyze" my document. Most of the time, it then
decides that
many paragraphs I have previously assigned as Outline level Body
Text really
deserve to be Level I and unceremoniously promotes them. Typical
targets for
promotion include table and figure captions plus bolded, underlined
or all
CAP one-line paragraphs, in other words, anything that looks like it
could
possibly be a Heading (except that it's not). Tearing hair out
searching web
and FAQs for anything, really desperate for any insight anyone might
possibly
be able to offer and thanks in advance for consideration.

ps.
On Autocorrect/Autoformat tab all options are unchecked except
Preserve Styles
On Autoformat as You Type tab all unchecked except first 4 items
(quotes,
ordinals, fractions and hyphens)