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MS Office Forum / Word / Menus and Toolbars / November 2007How to control which formatting is applied by "Bullets" button?
I have the strange phenomenon, that all of a sudden, when I press the "Bullets" toolbar button it assigns not the usual "List Bullet" format to the current paragraph but rather "List Bullet 4". I have no idea why that happens but it creates insanely indented lists (and of course simply false formatting, i.e. uses a false bullet symbol, causes false nesting, etc.). How and where can I change this behavior back to normal? And what might have caused this sudden change??? Michael The Bullets button always applies the most recently used bullet format (the one that would be selected in the List Gallery if you opened the Format | Bullets and Numbering dialog), which is why it is far preferable to apply bulleted styles directly. It may be helpful to know that the built-in keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+L will apply the List Bullet style.  SignatureSuzanne 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. > I have the strange phenomenon, that all of a sudden, when I press the > "Bullets" toolbar button it assigns not the usual "List Bullet" format [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > > Michael What exactly is meant by "most recently used"? I am asking, because currently after pressing the "Bullets"-button I always have to go into the format selection box and change "List Bullet 4" to "List Bullet". So, I would assumed the latter to be the "most recently used". And things are getting even weirder! This is now after I went into Format => "Bullets and Numbering". Here I first selected a different option and then the one that was selected initially (i.e. when I entered that dialogue). And guess what I see now? If I now select a "Normal" paragraph (i.e. a paragraph that has the "Normal" style) and press the Bullets button, it indeed assigns the "List Bullet" format, BUT at the same time changes that format to the formatting (i.e. bullet and indentation) of the previous "List Bullet 4" format! I have the Styles and Formatting task pane open and I can see that pressing "Bullets" not only applies the style but at the same time changes the format of the style "List Bullet", i.e. even in the task pane the line showing an example of "List Bullet" suddenly gets indented about an inch further to the right! This seems MS Word at it's best again! Some of its formatting behavior will probably forever remain a book with seven seals for me... ||-( Michael > The Bullets button always applies the most recently used bullet > format (the one that would be selected in the List Gallery if you [quoted text clipped - 14 lines] >> >> Michael If you never use the Bullets button, I think you will not experience these inexplicable behaviors. SignatureSuzanne 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. > What exactly is meant by "most recently used"? I am asking, because > currently after pressing the "Bullets"-button I always have to go into [quoted text clipped - 40 lines] > >> > >> Michael > If you never use the Bullets button, I think you will not experience > these inexplicable behaviors. Well - yes - I agree. But that a bit "side-stepping the problem", isn't it? I mean: pressing the bullets button would (at least in theory) be so much quicker and more intuitive than having to open the format selection box each time, scrolling down to "List Bullet" and select that... Or is there no chance in getting this to reliably work as expected? Michael I'm not suggesting that you open the Bullets and Numbering dialog; I'm suggesting that you apply a style that has the type of bullets you want. Until you learn to use styles in Word, you will always be fighting it. SignatureSuzanne 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. > > If you never use the Bullets button, I think you will not experience > > these inexplicable behaviors. [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > > Michael Well, I actually feel pretty comfortable with Word styles. When I once ran into really hairpulling problems I even once worked myself through and (mostly) understood style descriptions like http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Numbering/WordsNumberingExplained.htm and a few others. The details have faded since, but I believe to have a "somewhat" decent idea, how this stuff works. But why the Bullets button does not only simply ASSIGN a style but at the same time MODIFIES it, is currently beyond me. I am getting the suspicion, that I am actually dealing with several different styles here that all seemed to be named "List Bullet", and at least one of these is messed up. And the user has practically no way to distinguish these because Word tries to "hide the complexity" again... Michael > I'm not suggesting that you open the Bullets and Numbering dialog; I'm > suggesting that you apply a style that has the type of bullets you > want. Until you learn to use styles in Word, you will always be > fighting it. If the most recently used format is a style (modified or otherwise), that's what you're likely to get. You can click Reset in each of the panes in the List Gallery to clear it out, then apply the style explicitly through the style dialog. For help with outline numbering, see http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/numbering/OutlineNumbering.html; for bullets, see http://www.ShaunaKelly.com/word/bullets/controlbullets.html. SignatureSuzanne 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. > Well, I actually feel pretty comfortable with Word styles. When I once > ran into really hairpulling problems I even once worked myself through [quoted text clipped - 16 lines] > > want. Until you learn to use styles in Word, you will always be > > fighting it. Thanks - that was indeed very helpful! Michael > If the most recently used format is a style (modified or otherwise), > that's what you're likely to get. You can click Reset in each of the [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > for bullets, see > http://www.ShaunaKelly.com/word/bullets/controlbullets.html. |
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