Somedays, I really hate Word.

September 27, 2007 5:00 PM

Ack! Word has suddenly forgotten my customized bullets-and-numberings settings - but the settings were four years old and I have no idea how to set them right again!

One serendipitous night I was complaining about how the bullet feature in Word didn't act as I wanted it to, and so I never used it. Someone I was speaking to immediately sat at my computer, worked for about ten minutes on some fiddly settings, and said "now try this." They were perfect, and I've used them constantly ever since. But suddenly tonight, as I sat down to work on an important project that needs a preliminary outline, I find out that Word has somehow reverted to some other type of setting (it's not default because it has pictures of roses - hardly standard!) and lost all of the nuance that allowed me to use it. I had written down what I thought were the proper settings, but putting those in doesn't correct the problem, it just changes it around. Help me...?

For reference, here is what it did/what I want it to do again:


And what it does now is more like the default setting - if I put in a bullet and then hit tab, the bullet itself stays put, but the text indents. The bullet never changes icon or position. It *used* to change both position and icon, and all looked very neat and orderly.

I'm guessing this is relatively simple if you know what you're doing, but I have never professed to understand much of the inner workings of Word.

posted by AthenaPolias to computers & internet (8 comments total)

and if that img tag isn't working, here is a link to the image.
posted by AthenaPolias at 5:02 PM on September 27, 2007

To get the bulleting system you had, here's what I did:
Select the "Format" menu, then "bullets and numbering". Then click on one of the bulleting systems and click the button that says "customize". You can then select what shapes you want for each level of bulleting by selecting each one left to right (under bullet character) and clicking the button "character" to find the one you want.
Does that make sense? It's really pretty easy once you know where to look. Hope that's what you needed.
posted by parkerjackson at 8:49 PM on September 27, 2007

Of course-- immediately after posting-- I read more carefully. You can't get the tabbing to work, but I can't help you there off the top of my head. Sorry.
posted by parkerjackson at 8:51 PM on September 27, 2007

On OS X this is under Format > Bullets & Numbering > Outline Numbered. Select one showing bullets and click Customize. Then set the bullet and position for each level up to 9 levels. Set both Text Position options to the same number and increase by the same amount for each level ie. .15/.30/.45 etc.
posted by loiseau at 9:29 PM on September 27, 2007

Those settings are stored in your normal.dot folder, which is located in Documents and Settings/user id/Application Data/Microsoft/Templates. You can look in there and see if there is an older version or something, or if you do backups of your Documents and Settings folder, you may have an older version in your backups. Other than that, I think they may be lost.
posted by corpse at 4:46 AM on September 28, 2007

I knew I forgot something! Should have perhaps mentioned that I'm running Windows XP and Office XP - not that it matters 100%, but just in case. loiseau, thanks for the help, and I'll try that if nothing else works, but I know that my settings were in format > bullets and numbering > bulleted, rather than the 'outline numbered' section. I'm hoping to be able to get that one back to normal as an ideal solution, but your solution will work in a pinch!
posted by AthenaPolias at 6:56 AM on September 28, 2007

You've stopped loading your normal.dot and have selected a different document template somehow.
posted by Mr. Gunn at 8:11 AM on September 28, 2007

So, Mr. Gunn - how do I change that back to loading normal.dot?
posted by AthenaPolias at 4:15 PM on September 28, 2007