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AndrewB_33335
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Re: Numbering and bullets in Word docs keep disappearing
I've been setting my docs up according to Shauna's guide for a decade or more and they will work fine (more or less) in a local environment, but as soon as you introduce SharePoint to the mix and multiple authors it all goes haywire. By now I have a great set of macros that are available in a custom toolbar and the templates themselves, which is why I keep the template on SharePoint too, that will essentially do some version of a "tick/untick". I have no technical knowledge of the MS Word code but I feel like the co-authoring stuff was built for the online version (which might be entirely new code?) and somehow shoe-horned into the desktop app, and it just doesn't play well with the ancient list style code. The documents can behave themselves for a while, but for instance just before review time now I have 7 people in an 80-page document and it's absolutely blown up: refreshing styles won't fix everything. It won't be until I get everyone else out of the document and run it that it will all settle down. List styles seem pretty flaky to begin with: I've often had the situation where I've gone in to edit the numbering or indents of the styles in a list style and when I press ok the list style loses all the linked paragraph styles, so I have to go back in and assign them all again.Re: Word templates in SharePoint are now opening as new documents instead of the template itself opening
MattBurr Thanks for the reply! Yes I worked out that if I opened in the browser first I could edit the template. It doesn't seem particularly logical given that PowerPoint doesn't operate the same way. I've given up expecting excellence from the largest software company in the world though!Re: Numbering and bullets in Word docs keep disappearing
nikkipike Yes I also have this issue. I have a macro that updates all of the fields in a document and that makes them all appear again however it's irritating as they appear and disappear at random. I see it mostly with figures and tables, where the caption will just say "Table:" without the number.Re: Numbering and bullets in Word docs keep disappearing
JessicaDavis3 My sense is that it's a SharePoint problem: if you bring the document off SharePoint and make sure that it's fine, it will stay fine from there on. However I haven't had the will to test that theory. After all these years I'm guessing that multiple authors is what causes the issues, perhaps with clashes in syncing using the desktop Word app. This is perhaps why MS pushes the terrible web version so much. For Excel we actually recommend people work in the web version if they want to co-author as it's much more stable and less prone to conflicts, however the web version of Excel is much better than Word, at least for simple Excel documents that just use the basic features.Word templates in SharePoint are now opening as new documents instead of the template itself opening
Up until a couple of weeks ago, if I had a .dotx or .dotm file in SharePoint, clicking on it in the browser would open the template so that I can edit it. Suddenly, I get a "Document 1" as if I'd double clicked it from Explorer. This is fine as a user, as I've had times where people have a bunch of documents saved as templates as they've opened the template and saved. However, how am I supposed to edit the templates now? I know I can do it via syncing and opening up via Explorer, however this is not ideal as if a document linked to it is in use, my changed version won't sync or will be uploaded as a copy with my laptop name appended to it. The version of the template that everyone is linked to will remain unchanged.Re: Numbering and bullets in Word docs keep disappearing
It's inconceivable to me that such a basic feature can remain broken for this long when using Microsoft's own software with its own collaboration system, however if you look for the issue the only references you'll find to it are on forums like this which are only user to user. My guess is that they simply lack the institutional knowledge to fix something as old as Word when it doesn't play well with a newer system. I'm guessing it will never be fixed as they're pushing their web version which will suit the requirements of 80% of people.Re: Numbering and bullets in Word docs keep disappearing
Here's a new one: yesterday I had a file where my usual macro to replace the styles threw up an error. The macro first reads the starting number of the list style that drives the headings, so that if it's schedule 12, the headings start with 12.1. In this case, the line where it read the list style starting number failed because it couldn't find the list style. I looked in the doc in the list drop down and yep, it wasn't there. Somehow the entire list style went missing. HOWEVER I went into the style manager, scrolled down to my lists, and there it was in the list! It appears that Word reads it from the drop down though as the macro referenced it and it gave an error. Once I manually relinked the template and refreshed the styles, the list style appeared in the drop down again and the macro worked. I rewrote the macro so that it will try to get the starting number from the document title, refresh the styles, then put that number in which achieves the same result, but these workarounds are getting ridiculous. This is the first time the list style not only cleared the reference to the styles linked to it, but disappeared completely.Recent activity in library/folders not updating properly
I've been looking through one of my sites and some folders have a complete history of changes for what looks like 60 days (which I think is the standard) however some with changes in the last 5 days have "There is no recent activity for this item" in the activity pane. I can see that things in that folder have modification dates well within the 60 days though. What's going on here, and why is it happening in some folders but not others? The file in this screenshot was modified less than a month ago but you can see it's not logged. But other folders in the same site show edits for miles.Re: Numbering and bullets in Word docs keep disappearing
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.Re: Numbering and bullets in Word docs keep disappearing
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.Re: Numbering and bullets in Word docs keep disappearing
One thing that's been suggested to me is that tracked changes and comments make it worse: I haven't been working on a project since I heard that so I haven't tried it out yet, but if you can it might be worth deleting all comments and tracking from a document that's causing you trouble and see if that improves things. Obviously comments are useful in a co-authoring environment so it's not a long-term solution, but a cause would be good to find.Re: Numbering and bullets in Word docs keep disappearing
cdarrow Interesting theory. What level of admin privileges are you talking about? I have site collection admin for each site but not access to the SharePoint Admin panel which is an IT-only thing (for obvious reasons). Not sure if it's the solution to my issue: I have my documents linked to the template which is stored on the same SharePoint site as all the documents that use it, so the template address is something like: "https://company.sharepoint.com/sites/bid_name/Submission/Submission%20Templates/Template.dotm" This doesn't tend to change: in the past I had issues with the template being on my local drive or a server that not everyone had access to, in which case it would constantly default to someone's Normal.dotm and need to be relinked, but ever since I started using the macro which directed it to the SharePoint location it's been fairly solid. It's the list styles getting messed up that's the issue, and it seems to be caused by multiple authors in the document so it appears there is a conflict somewhere where it's getting bad information or corruption to this. I have found that documents with lots of tracked changes or comments behave even worse, and sometimes won't come good even with refreshing the styles from the template. I have to accept all changes and delete all comments, then refresh.Re: Numbering and bullets in Word docs keep disappearing
Trang_Le Yes, refreshing the styles from the template is the way to get the bullets and numbering back, however they will continue to disappear when the document is edited on SharePoint so I usually set up a macro to do this and it gets run dozens of times a day. It appears that multiple authors, tracked changes and comments are the things that cause the problems. It's up to Microsoft to find a permanent fix to their incredibly unstable working environment.Re: Numbering and bullets in Word docs keep disappearing
cdarrowNo, nothing yet. Hoping that it might get some traction because every company I've worked at has this problem so it's got to be an issue that deserves attention as it wrecks the usefulness of it. I don't think the document losing the connection with the template affects it: I have mine linked to templates in SharePoint and they stay fairly solidly connected even though the bullets and numbering goes haywire. I sync my SharePoint locations to OneDrive so I too have the template linked to somewhere on my local drive initially, however in each template I have a macro that changes the link to the SharePoint location (and updates the styles, which fixes the numbering and bullets again, at least until the next time multiple authors cause it to drop off). You can link it directly to the SharePoint location if you view the site in Explorer view (which you can only do from Internet Explorer), then drag the folder containing the template into your quick access. Once there you can browse to it in the template dialog and attach the template that way.Re: Numbering and bullets in Word docs keep disappearing
scotthardegree Thanks for your note. I haven't tried using SharePoint with forced check outs, as one of the main advantages is collaboration. I suspect it is multiple users that causes this to happen, as the document most usually messes up once two people have it open at once. I'd love to know why, and get Microsoft to come up with a solution as it's a huge issue given collaboration is one of their main selling points. Edit: coming to you from my brand new creative user name as I've changed companies and had to make a new profile...
