[Caroline]

I have a document with multiple levels of nested lists, numbered & bulleted,
and some text that's not list items. I'm not using Outline mode.

To change the formatting of a single item (i.e., to change a single bulleted
item to numbered) I would typically (1) remove the bullet formatting and then
(2) add the number, generally using buttons in the formatting toolbar.

When I do this in this document -- remove a bullet from a single item, for
example -- EVERY SINGLE LINE (whether it was a list item or not) in the
document changes to the new format. (And the focus moves to somewhere else in
the document -- I think usually to the page above the item I was working
with.)

My immediate reaction, of course, after my heart stops pounding, is to hit
Ctrl-Z.

This restores the correct formatting to the entire document, and the focus
moves back to the line I was working with, which is now formatted the way I
would expect it to be -- the bullet has been removed or the number has been
added.

It also seems to happen with bolding a single non-list-item line -- every
line in the document took on the new formatting (bold + non-list-item) --
YIKES!!! Luckily Ctrl-Z restores everything.

I tried this in another similar document, and it seems to work the way I'm
used to -- I can remove a bullet or add a number without going through the
extra heart-stopping use of Ctrl-Z.

But I copied a few lines from the problem document into a new blank file,
and I had the same problem.

So presumably there's a problem with this document, or perhaps with the
styles. Is there a way to fix this without retyping everything into a new
file?

I'm using Word 2003 (Office Professional). I'm a pretty proficient user,
although I probably wouldn't quite qualify as a power user. I know I could be
changing list formatting using styles, but I'm still in the very preliminary
stages with this doc...the way I'm doing it is what works for me at this
point.

thx for any help!