Restarting Numbered List (2003)

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I know quite a bit about Word numbering, thanks to MVP articles. I’ve set up (painfully, I have to say) templates that use outline numbering schemes, and they work really well. So I’m not a complete novice. But I’m afraid I did do a copy/paste on a portion of a list and now I have a mess. My first item in a numbered list will not restart numbering. This means the first number in my list is 10, then the list continues with 1, 2, 3…

I’ve checked the previous list. I’ve added paragraphs. I’ve cleared formatting and then reapplied my list style. All to no avail.

When I bring up the bullets/numbering box when I’m on that first list item, the options for Restart or Continue are grayed out. And even though the Restart Numbering option is showed to be selected, that’s not what’s happening (and naturally I can’t change it since it’s grayed out!).

I’d be happy to ditch the whole list and redo it, but partial attempts at doing that don’t work and I’m afraid the problem would just move to later lists in the document. I’m sure some tag or something is set behind the scenes that I can’t see or modify.

Any ideas how I might be able to clean up this mess?

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I don’t use automatic numbering very much, but maybe if you replace with text with something random and post the offending portion of the document, someone can spot the problem.

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When the Restart Numbering option grays out, I’ve found that pressing the Enter key to drop the offensive line down to the next line usually reactivates the option (I’m using Word 2000). Then, after selecting the Restart Numbering option, I arrow up and delete the previous line. It’s not very elegant, but it’s great in a pinch and almost always works for me.

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I would select the list and try Ctrl-Q – This should remove any local paragraph formatting to set the numbering back to the style definition. Then you should be able to right click the text to restart the numbering.

If this doesn’t work you could try a macro to restart the numbering.
Sub ListRestart()
‘ Resets numbering of current list to restart numbering
Dim aList As ListFormat
Set aList = Selection.Range.ListFormat
aList.ApplyListTemplate ListTemplate:=aList.ListTemplate, _
ContinuePreviousList:=False
End Sub

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