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Suzanne S. Barnhill Suzanne S. Barnhill is offline
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Default Why are outline numbered list limited to 9 levels?

I'm always suspicious of people who say they need more than nine levels
because I've found so many of them that think they need Heading 1 for the
first heading (at a given level), Heading 2 for the second, etc. It's a bit
more difficult to believe, but some people will even set up outline
numbering levels for simple lists, setting the numbering to start from 2 on
Level 2, 3 on Level 3, etc. So I try to probe a bit to bring out any
information that might confirm that this misconception is involved.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"Stefan Blom" wrote in message
...
Too many list levels would be equally confusing for the writer, I believe.

:-)

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP


"Jezebel" wrote:

Caveat lector! This is functionality to make life easier for *writers*.



"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote in message
...
You need more than nine levels of numbering in a single list? Gack! I
wouldn't want to be the one who was trying to figure out the
1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1 level of subheadings.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the

newsgroup
so
all may benefit.

"Jim Perullo" Jim wrote in message
news Just another voice in the noise of the crowd: I could definitely use

more
levels - stopping at nine (9) is quite limiting for Bill-of-Materials
work
and other logical listing purposes.

"J. Knoernschild" wrote:

Two things - one, isn't it Microsoft's responsability to include

this
available option as they need to appeal to many users - and not

just
limit a
feature because only 60,000 people might need it out of 2 million.
Second,
how can you customize styles or templates for automatic outlined
numbering
greater than 10 when word is limited to 9?

"Herb Tyson [MVP]" wrote:

I'm guessing that the need for more than 9 levels is rare. Most

users
seldom
need more than 4 or 5 levels, as most. Note that Word's built-in
Heading
levels go only from 1 to 9 as well.

That said, almost anything is possible in Word if one is willing

to
invest
the time/money to setting it up. If your company routinely needs
12-13
numbering levels, and if they're committed to staying with Word,

it
would
make sense to develop templates that do this for you -- including
styles,
tools and macros to make it transparent to the user.
--
Herb Tyson MS MVP
Please respond in the newsgroups so everyone can follow along.
http://www.herbtyson.com
"J. Knoernschild" wrote

in
message
...
Suzanne,

I strongly believe that Microsoft should come out with an

update to
fix
this. At Boeing we must write Performance Specifications all

the
time and
to
not have more than 9 levels is impossible to create a spec.

Often
times
are
specs go as deep at 12-13 levels.

I rely on the custom numbering schemes when writing a spec and

not
having
this feature limits my use of Microsoft Word. I must say that

I am
rather
disappointed in the reasoning for not making this list larger.

Thanks,

J

"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:

Really the best place to pursue this inquiry is in the

..numbering
NG. The
regulars who post there know far more about numbering than I

ever
will. I
remain skeptical, however, that the functionality you're

seeking
was ever
available in Word.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to

the
newsgroup
so
all may benefit.

"F. James Little"

wrote
in
message
...
Suzanne,

Thanks for the reply. I had actually thought of trying to

nest
the
lists,
but when I tried it, I was unable to get it to work... (I'm

sure
there
is
some trick to it.) When I tried, it would continue to treat

the
nested
list
as a continuation of the Parent list, and would not allow

any
further
indentations to occur.

A reply from Robert to this same question on the

Word.Numbering
forum
contained a link which may have offered a solution to the
nesting
issue.
If
you know of a simple method using just the interface to nest
list, I
would
love to hearit!

Thanks again for your help.

F. James Little
Sr. Software Engineer

"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:

You can have as many level of indents and bullets as you

like
because
there
is no issue with restarting numbering after a certain

level.
You can
apply
any bullet you like to any style you like with any indent

you
like.
You
could even, I imagine, have multiple outline-numbered

lists
(nested),
but
you can't have more than nine levels within a given list.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups

to
the
newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"F. James Little"
wrote in
message
...
Graham,

I would have to disagree with you that an outline 9 0r

more
levels
deep
would be incomprehensible. I would think that it would

be
very
much
dependent upon the intent of the document and its

intended
document.
In
the
particular case I am attempting to document the

architecture
of an
object
oriented software module by creating an outline of
pseudopodia.
(This
to
be
accompanied by UML diagrams developed in Visio.) The

logic
of this
particular module easily goes to more than 20 levels

deep,
and this
is
not
a
particularly complicated module. To an audience of

fellow
Software
Engineers, I can assure you that the resulting

pseudopodia
outline
would
be
completely comprehensible.

In any case, I believe that setting the limit to 9

levels is
somewhat
arbitrary, and I believe that Microsoft should not place
limits
upon
users
within its applications unless there is a resource
limitation
or
documented
requirement to do so. Given how buggy the numbered

outline
seems
to
be in
Word, perhaps it is in fact a resource limitation that
forces
the
limit to
be
9. It seems to me that earlier versions of the MS Word
supported
more, if
not unlimited, levels when bullets and numbers could be

set
to
multilevel
prior to the advent of the specific numbered outline

option.
(The
numbered
outline may have been available in previous versions,

but if
it was
it
was
not the default as it is today; the simple bulleted

format
was the
default
which could be customized to multiple levels.)

If I am correct on the above, then this would seem to be

a
case of
lost
functionality. (A major, "your going to hell" sin in my
industry.)
In
any
case, if Word is not going to support more than 9

levels,
why
then
does
customization dialog present the level selection in a
scrollable
list
control
with all 9 levels visible in the list? The scrollbar is
disabled
because
there is nothing to scroll to, but it is nonetheless

there.
If
there
was
not
the intent to support more levels, why then allow the
scrollbar to
be
present
al all! It is very confusing to the user in that it

gives
the
impression
that
there may be a circumstance when the scroll bar may be
active.
(Believe
me,
I have spent the better part of a morning looking for

just
such a
circumstance.) If the Microsoft Word development team

did
not
intend
there
to ever be more than 9 levels, then it would have been a
simple
matter
through code to prevent the listbox from displaying a
vertical
scroll
bar!
(I believe the vertical scrollbar is a holdover from
previous
versions
where
more than 9 levels were supported.)

So, my question still stands... why does MS Word not

support
more
than