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AndrewB_33334
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Joined Mar 01, 2021
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Re: Numbering and bullets in Word docs keep disappearing
Here's a picture of what keeps happening to the docs. The paragraph styles stay intact, however the list styles keep getting cleared. On the left is how it should be, and the right is what keeps happening, necessitating constant refreshing of the styles from the template to get the numbering and bullets back in.Re: Numbering and bullets in Word docs keep disappearing
I see 950 people have viewed this post but there are no replies. If you've found this because you're having the same issue it would be helpful to hear from you so that we could get someone looking at this issue as I know colleagues at other companies who have the exact same issue so I believe it's a SharePoint/Teams problem when interacting with Word. It's been so long since I've worked on a project like this off a server instead of online that I can't remember if it used to happen then (I don't think it did). Similar posts in the Office forum usually end up being referred to the SharePoint forum without any solution, so here's our chance.SharePoint is messing up my list styles in Word
Whenever I have Word docs in SharePoint with multiple people working on them, I find that the list styles keep losing their links to paragraph styles. I have a list style called "Numbered Headings" that keeps track of how Heading 1, Heading 2 etc are all numbered. Works fine for a while, but all of a sudden someone will make an edit and none of the headings are numbered any more, and I worked out it's because the "Numbered Headings" list style isn't linked to any styles any more. If I go into the list style and link "Heading 1" back to level 1, "Heading 2" back to level 2 etc all the numbering comes back. But shortly after it will lose all the links again. Everyone is working on the docs via the app, not in the online version of Word. They assure me all they are doing is making simple edits. This has happened to me for years with various teams so it's not just one project. A friend at another company entirely has exactly the same issue. I am trying to work out what causes it and if it's as common as it appears to be, get Microsoft to acknowledge it and fix it, because it's such a productivity killer.Numbering and bullets in Word docs keep disappearing
When working as a team on Word files within SharePoint, I constantly have problems with things like heading numbering disappearing (or changing from numbers to bullets), bullets going missing or bullets turning into numbers. From what I can see, the custom list styles in the documents go missing. Other formatting things happen, like table column widths messing up. I can fix it all, PDF it, save and close, and when I open the Word doc again it's all gone haywire once more. I was always approaching this from a Word bug perspective, but maybe it's something I'm doing wrong in regard to SharePoint. Essentially, this is my workflow: 1. Create Word template. 2. Create documents from Word template (bid response schedules, one for each). 3. Upload all files to SharePoint. At this point, the template resides on my computer, in my OneDrive folder. As I understand it, this shouldn't be an issue because unless people play around with what template the document is linked to, it shouldn't change. However, often I found that the template had reverted back to "Normal". So, I started saving the template in a location on SharePoint (along with the documents) and making sure it was linked to it. When the document styles go haywire, to fix it all I need to do is link back to the template and update the styles. I have a macro that has the location of the template hard coded, and it links the document to the template, updates the styles, then turns off the checkbox again. (Note: I always make sure the "update styles from template" is kept off). Whether the template is on my computer or on SharePoint, once the styles start messing up they will continue to keep messing up, so putting the template on SharePoint doesn't seem to have fixed it. I'm outlining this process because all the forum posts I've found seem to treat SharePoint more as a space where templates are uploaded and people use the "New" button to create and then save documents straight into SharePoint from Templates that are uploaded into the site library. This is obviously not how we are using it: these Teams sites are created per project, we do our submission and then move on. I'm the only one creating documents and other people contribute to them. Is there something I'm doing fundamentally wrong and that's why these issues happen? If not, has anyone seen this issue and worked out what causes it?Re: Numbering Word Online vs. Word desktop app is different
I've also seen this: in Word itself my numbering was: 1 1.1 1.1.1 On Word Online it looked like: 1 1.1 1.1 The formatting was right but the numbering was out because it ran the numbering on instead of starting a new level. To write this post I had to go back and check, and interestingly, if I opened the document in Online first it was wrong, but if I opened it in the app and *then* in Online it was correct. Something not right there. I wish I could completely disable Word Online. I have to set every new Teams library to open in the app and even then links directly to files open straight in the browser. Maddening.
