Hi, all.

I'm using Word 97, on a long lived (two years) document of around 250 pages.  It is
a technical document, using outline numbering.  The symptoms of the problem are
that:

Particular sections (e.g. 2.1.2.1) forget their proper numbers.  Each time I open
the document, this section number has reset itself to 1.1.1.1.   All of the sections
following this one, inherit the new, defective numbering.

Only a small number of sections in the document (four, out of around two hundred
sections) seem to have this problem.  But of course the inheritance of the numbering
means that most of the document sections are incorrectly numbered.

Almost any edit operation that I perform (e.g insert blank line immediately before
offending heading) will cause the number to go back to its proper value - only to
once again revert when the document is opened the next time.

The document has a long history - the listnumber database became full in the past,
and I exported to Word version 2 to fix it.

I have followed Shauna Kelly's excellent instructions for setting up outline
numbering and heading styles.  It made no difference to this problem.

I have tried the obvious things such as deleting the offending paragraphs and
recreating them, or changing to a simple text style and then reapplying the header
style.  No change.

A number of my colleagues have similar problems with their (long lived, larger,
outline numbered) documents.

Hope someone can help

Thx in advance !