Forum Discussion
Numbering and bullets in Word docs keep disappearing
AndrewB_33335 I have been encountering the same issue. We are using Sharepoint to allow multiple people to collaborate on Word documents with Tracked Changes on and using Comments as well. Sometimes the paragraph numbers/bullets disappear and other times they change to Asian characters. These problems are a bit random because not all of our Word files are getting corrupted in this manner and I haven't been able to identify a pattern that is contributing to the problem. I'm wondering if having multiple people making changes to the same file at the same time is part of the issue. I haven't been able to find posts on other forums/sites describing this problem.
- My company is experiencing co-authoring issues on a regular basis. We have some large documents with many collaborators who have issues with templates as well as paragraph numbering going awry (I wonder if they are 2 separate issues, as the paragraph problem can happen with a single user?). We are on ME 2208, which seems to have helped, but not eradicated the situation. A "Best Practice" guide, along with a deeper understanding of how co-authoring works under the hood would be a great help!
- Huh! Interesting that you have also seen this happen with built in list styles! That puts all my theories to bed. So the last thing I haven't asked... Anyone notice if it could be a Mac vs. PC thing?? I have noticed there are two people in my organization that I frequently associate with this problem... Anyone else seeing patterns with specific users? May go back to Nikki's post saying to be sure everyone is using the desktop version vs. online... Got me wondering if it could be a specific browser or device issue...?
cdarrow Same as you, only saw reference to "headers" which made me think it's to do with actual headers/header style rather than "Heading". And this happens to anything that is part of a list style anyway, not just headings. I use custom list styles, and have had it happen to both the built in (Heading 1 etc, and List Bullet etc) as well as custom styles. Doesn't seem to make any difference. I also tried using the built in lists rather than custom list styles and it eventually happens with those too.
- Yeah, I scrolled through those and didn't see anything obvious applying to numbered lists. If the release notes said "headings" instead of "headers" that would be more compelling.
Out of curiosity do all of you use custom list styles where each level is associated with a specific style? Is everyone using the default Heading 1, 2, etc.(modified or not)? Or has anyone seen this issue when associating custom heading styles with lists too (assuming that's even possible)? What about additional formatting on the list level numbering (e.g., bold, color, kerning, etc.)?
Just trying to brainstorm whether there could be some simpler issue at play.
I've also noticed this issue occurs sometimes when I have a heading within a building block content control - I may need to do some testing to verify the order, but I'm pretty sure when I select a building block that adds a heading, the number first shows up as a bullet, then when I exit the control, if I go and click another heading number it refreshes the one just added to the correct number/style... I'm grasping at straws here, but just trying to understand the order in which the document processes these things to see if we can figure out when this is happening. Not that I'm a programmer or anything... Haha nikkipike AndrewB_33334 nikkipike, thanks for the info. I looked at the release notes and Version 2208 September 13 says they've fixed an issue in Word where header styles were disappearing when co-authoring. I'm not sure this addresses the issue, since they only mention header styles. I've seen it occurring with other styles I've built in my template associated with a custom multilevel list.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/current-channelnikkipike , I hope you're right! I just checked and everyone in my organization is now on 2209, which appears to have been released in September. I can say that I had the phantom list numbering issue as recently as last week (before I verified everyone being on the same version today). Would be great if the issue is magically resolved, but seems a little hopeful.
Something tells me this has to be an issue with the way we are all setting up custom List Styles though - a murky topic that I still am not sure I fully understand - or at least some interaction between List Styles and the track changes/coauthoring issues where we all seem to see this happening. Whether or not that is the issue, I'd love for Microsoft devs to spend some time improving that (and table styles!!). Seems like there are a lot of invisible dependencies that I don't really understand.
I still don't have a solution, but I think the silver lining is that since AndrewB_33335 's second post, when there were 900 views, we now have this thread up to 14.1k views, so this issue is at least gaining traction. Keep it active and maybe it will eventually get the attention of somebody who knows what is going on.
I did notice a random thing, not sure if its related or not, but when I click into a header in some of my templates, the Level 2 numbering gets like a transparent look to it, and that is the numbering level that I most often see this issue with (although sometimes all the list numbering disappears from all levels...?).
I generally just click that number and hit CTRL+spacebar to clear formatting and it often fixes itself. I'm thinking it's probably a separate issue, but figured I'd throw it out there to give Microsoft's support algorithm something to chew on!
- Thanks Nikki, sounds promising. I'm on 2108 and updates are managed by my company so hopefully eventually I'll be up to date and see what happens. Will probably take a while for this bubble to flow through the system though, as we work with so many different companies, big and small, on the same SharePoint sites. I also don't like working with AutoSave on as I like to be able to commit changes when I'm happy with them: I find in PowerPoint at least you lose the ability to undo after a little while. But, I'll take that if it solves the other issue which causes me so many headaches.
This is a known issue with Microsoft and in theory they have resolved the issue in the latest release of MS Word (if I remember correctly 2209). The important thing is everyone who is co-authoring needs to be on the latest version, they need to use the full Desktop version of MS Word and they need to have Auto Save on.
With this set up the problem has become less frequent but our clients are still getting issues with things changing in the document.
Having a template attached to the document with the correct styles so they can quickly reset the styles has really helped our client work around this problem.
