Multiple styles reset numbering on Heading?

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I have a customer with a template (Word 2003) with four styles that all reset when Heading 1 increments.
Heading 2 is the obvious one, but there’s a Supportive Table, Supportive Figure and Supportive Appendix that all renumber just like (and independent from) Heading 2.

I can not reproduce this from scratch in other documents, and copying the styles from this template to another (where the functionality is needed) yields unnumbered styles.
Analysis of the list templates shows that none of the list templates mentions the Supportive styles, only Heading 1-9. The List Template attached to “Supportive Table” shows its LinkedStyle is “Heading 1” through “Heading 9”.

How can it get this way, is it legal, and can I reproduce it?
Thanks,
Joel

For example:
Heading 1: 1.0 Foo
Heading 2: 1.1 Bar
Supp Table: 1.1 Three strings walk into a bar
Supp Table: 1.2 The first one goes up to the bartender and says, “Gimme a beer!”
Heading 2: 1.2 Bam
Supp Table: 1.3 The bartender says, “We don’t serve strings in here.”
Heading 2: 1.3 Frooble
Heaidng 2: 1.4 Star
Heading 2: 1.5 Nobody
Supp Table: 1.4 The second one goes up to the bartender and says, “Gimme a beer!”
Heaidng 1: 2.0 Asterisk
Supp Table: 2.1 The bartender says, “Get outta here, we don’t serve your kind.”
Heading 1: 3.0 Hash
Supp Table: 3.1 The third string combs out one end, then makes a loop in it, and goes up to the bar: “Gimme a beer!”
Supp Table 3.2 The bartender says, “Ain’t you one of them strings?”
Supp Figure:3.1: The string says, “Nope. Frayed Knot.”

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Joel,

It will be much easier to analyze what’s going on, if you could post a sample document (with any confidential content removed, of course). Just based on what you’re describing, it sounds like there are two separate lists in this outline, which isn’t a good formula for stability or reproducibility!

Also, did you try using Organizer to copy the styles from one template to the other?

Gary

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In addition to the question that Gary asked re “did you try using Organizer to copy the styles from one template to the other,” did you also copy the list style found in that same location (the Organizer)? I believe the List Style is where your numbering scheme would be saved.

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I’ve tried copying the styles using both the Organizer for individuals, and the UpdateStyles method, neither of which appears to preserve the lists.
There are no List Styles in the document — I believe the templates these are based on may pre-date the List Style concept (scary).

And yes, I believe you that this could lead to instability.

I’m asking if I can upload the file, if I can, I’ll be back here shortly.

The customer is being very difficult — it’s a corporate merger and they’re trying to get the features of both companies’ templates to work together.
They’re asking for a “unified” template that merely attaching to and updating styles will make everything work happy happy… no macros to clean things up. That may be impossible.

I would advise changing the “Supportive” items to captions that capture the Heading numbering — which has its own nightmares, but one I know how to manage. But that requires running a clean-up routine after attaching the template.

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…it’s a corporate merger and they’re trying to get the features of both companies’ templates to work together.
They’re asking for a “unified” template that merely attaching to and updating styles will make everything work happy happy… no macros to clean things up. That may be impossible.

Hopefully they realize that unifying Word document styles is the least of their upcoming challenges.

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jscher — I think management knows it, their contractors that are doing the bulk of the work may have rose-colored glasses.

I managed to reproduce the behavior of the styles — I was wrong that the “alternates” numbered separately within Heading 1, they numbered continuously with Heading 2, except they are centered. So re-creating the styles as “Based On” Heading 2 reproduced the behavior I wanted.

What I found, though, is that a reset routine I’d written, that rebuilds the list templates (using named list templates to be bulletproof), reassigns all the text in the alternate styles to Heading 2 when the list template is assigned ot Heading 2. Disturbing that Word would do that without asking, as the alternate styles do not enter into it at all.

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