3.1. Multiple numbering schemes in a single document
3.2. Abstract and concrete numbering lists
3.4. Numbering lists in paragraph styles
3.5. Consulting the abstract numbering lists
3.6. Consulting the concrete instances of the numbering lists
4.1. Don’t use your favourite buttons
4.2. Don’t use Autoformatting-as-you-type
4.3. Always use the Multilevel List button
4.4. Formatting the numbering scheme
4.5. Updating an existing numbering scheme
4.6. Configuration sequence for numbering & paragraph styles
5. Multiple styles at the same numbering level
6.1. Using multi-level numbering schemes with only one number
6.4. Using AutoNum / AutoNumLgl / AutoNumOut fields
7. Storing numbering in templates
9.2. How cross-references work under-the-hood
9.3. Why do cross-references break?
9.4. How do cross-references function between documents?
Without any doubt, automatic numbering in MS Word is the Number One Frustration among legal experts. There’s always something that goes wrong, and fixing it seems like trial-and-error.
There are plenty of books on MS Word, but very few of them contain in-depth explanations about automatic numbering, let alone that they explain what’s really going on under-the-hood. Furthermore, most of these books are targeting non-legal audiences, while legal experts have specific needs when drafting contracts, memos and legal briefs. Also, the most interesting webpage that exist about this topic focuses on ancient versions of MS Word.
In this guide, we therefore deliberately try to explain you everything there is to know about numbering, taking exactly the opposite approach as all the books and the point-and-click tutorials that suggest that Word’s numbering is easy.
Note that this guide is targeting MS Word power users: those of us — associate lawyers, legal engineers and knowledge managers, but also secretaries and layout experts — who (are supposed to) know more than average about MS Word, and are always called upon by colleagues when an MS Word document is behaving badly. Every law firm and every large legal team hosts at least one of them. If you feel like this is you, and you want to know everything there is about numbering, then this guide is for you.
As the expression goes: "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime". If you’re looking for a quick-and-easy tutorial on how to fix the numbering of your current document, look elsewhere. If instead you want to learn all the ins and outs of Word’s numbering, then read on!
Internally, Word uses the OOXML standard for MS Office documents: a standard reference document of about 5,000 pages with 1,500 pages dealing specifically with MS Word, essentially formalises the structure that Word has been using since 1981.
It’s remarkable that even though several new word processing elements have been added over the years, the core principles behind numbering and styling have remained unchanged. Microsoft’s engineers were true visionaries by taking an approach that has proven to be sufficiently flexible for use in a variety of situations across many decades.
This flexibility comes at the price of increased complexity: the numbering system cannot be intuitively understood by clicking around. Still, it’s completely understandable that Microsoft’s engineers tilted towards more flexibility at the cost of reduced simplicity, because from their perspective Microsoft Word was actually the most intuitive and user-friendly word processor of its time.
The reason was that Word opted for a visual approach, enabling users to format documents using a mouse and seeing results directly on the screen, instead of requiring users to directly type or juggle with formatting codes that were mixed into the text. The few hours of training on understanding the concepts behind Word’s formatting approach were therefore seen as a huge step forward compared to competitors such as WordPerfect and WordStar.
I remember that my aunt — who was working as a secretary — went on a full week of training to learn how to use WordPerfect and received a laminated coloured keyboard template overlay with keyboard shortcuts and formatting codes.
The visual approach and the lack of formatting codes are indeed a huge advantage, but for complex layouts it would sometimes help to see how a Word-document is internally structured. Word-documents often feel like partial “black boxes”, because users are deliberately shielded from the underlying structure, with some buttons doing seemingly magic things when you press them. Until they don’t, of course.
There’s a reason why some writers still prefer to use ancient versions of WordStar, and why WordPerfect is still relatively popular in the legal community. Meanwhile, Microsoft firmly takes the opposite direction, by adding new layers of seemingly easy buttons that keep its users even further away from the core numbering options. As you will notice in the explanations below, users have to dig several dialog boxes deep to get to the core numbering settings. Microsoft clearly takes the position that because users cannot intuitively understand the numbering system, while it’s also naïve to assume they will following any training, the only option is to add a few easy buttons to cover the most common situations.
With this in-depth guide, we hope that some of the magic and black box nature of Word will diminish, so that you can get the best of both worlds.
Intuitively, numbering paragraphs seems easy: there’s usually some main numbering scheme (1., 1.1., 1.2, etc.) and occasionally some bullets.
However, you’d be surprised about the complexity when formally analysing examples. For example, have a look at the following screenshot:
This page uses up to four different numbering schemes. Some probably appear only once in the document (e.g., the numbering structure of the recitals), some may be repeated (e.g., the filled bullets used in the party introductions) and some be used only once but persist across the entire document (e.g., the main clause numbering).
To keep track of all these numbering schemes, Word applies a three-level structure:
For example, in the screenshot above, Word would create the following four abstract numbering lists:
Word will also create at least one concrete instance for each of those four abstract numbering lists and tag every numbered paragraph with a reference to such concrete instance. If, further down in the document, some other paragraphs would also require filled bullets with the same layout, a second concrete instance of the abstract numbering list would be created.
All of this behind-the-scenes stuff probably seems overly complex, and you’re probably wondering why all of this is relevant when you’re dealing with legal documents. Just know that this will become clear further down the document. With this mere introduction of abstract and concrete numbering lists, you probably understand why Microsoft no longer assumes that naïve users will learn these concepts before using Word.
The division into abstract and concrete numbering lists enables multiple lists being intermixed with each other in one single document, while avoiding that users must configure the numbering scheme. For example, for the document in the following screenshot, when the user clicked on the bullet-button in the toolbar, Word created one abstract numbering list (e.g., “one level, indented, a-b-c style”) and one concrete instance of that abstract numbering list. Each of the four paragraphs would then be tagged with that one concrete instance, because the user would like the list to continue from b) to c), even though some paragraph intervened.
If the user restarts the numbering of this list (e.g., by right-clicking on a number and choosing Restart numbering) then two concrete instances of that same abstract numbering list will be created, and the two bottom paragraphs will be tagged with the second concrete instance.
Similar to how you can create styles for paragraph attributes (alignment, indentation, spacing, …), styles for character attributes (font name, color, size, …) and styles for table layouts, you can also create styles for abstract numbering lists, aka “list styles”.
On a technical level, each list style is associated with an abstract numbering list. When you change this list style, you will automatically change the associated abstract numbering list and all the concrete instances of that abstract numbering list.
Similar to paragraph styles, character styles and table styles, the advantage of list styles is that you can reuse them across documents, e.g. by making them part of an MS Word template. An even more important advantage is that list styles get an explicit name, which allows for easier management in a Word-document, because it’s often difficult to visually see the difference between multi-level styles.
As a good Word-citizen you are probably using paragraph styles everywhere you can, because you understand that styles are a sine qua non for legal document drafting. If so, then it shouldn’t surprise you that you can associate your paragraph styles with numbering levels of an abstract numbering list, so that:
Below, we’ll explain how to do all of this.
Don’t confuse list styles with paragraph styles. A list style is a style that configures the numbering (numbering type, extra characters to appear, etc.) for up to nine different levels, while a paragraph style is a style that configures a paragraph’s layout (font, color, alignment, spacing, etc.). There can be a connection between a list style and a paragraph style, as explained below, but fundamentally they are different entities in MS Word.
In recent Windows-versions of Word, it is no longer possible to get an exhaustive overview of all the abstract numbering lists that are used in a document — once again an illustration of how Microsoft increasingly shields users from the core settings for numbering.
It is possible to get an overview of all list styles through the Styles Organizer, as discussed below. However, as implied by the name, the Styles Organizer will obviously omit abstract numbering lists that are not linked to a list style.
In the Mac-version of Word, you can get an exhaustive overview through the Format | Bulletpoints and numbering… dialog box. For the two screenshots above, the dialog box shows that there’s one abstract numbering list, having an uninspired name such as “Current List1”, because that abstract numbering list was implicitly created when the user clicked on the bullets-button (instead of creating a named list style, as further discussed below).
In neither the Windows-version nor the Mac-version of Word there is a way to get an exhaustive overview of all the concrete instances of the numbering lists. Instead, Word automatically manages the concrete numbering lists for you. Every time you create a new abstract list, Word will automatically create an associated concrete numbering list. Similarly, every time you restart the numbering of a list, Word will automatically create a new concrete numbering list and change the tag of all the paragraphs downwards towards that new concrete numbering list.
If you really want to see what’s going on, you can however easily do so by renaming the .DOCX file into a .ZIP file, and then unzip it:
In the subfolder word you will see the numbering.xml file (which exposes the abstract and concrete numbering lists) while the document.xml file exposes the individual paragraphs of the document, where relevant being tagged with a reference to a concrete numbering list. The files are formatted as XML and requires some getting used to, but you should be able to understand the raw internal structure of MS Word.
When it comes to numbering paragraphs, most tutorials and books will instruct you to click on either the Bullets or the Numbering button in the Home tab of the Ribbon.
That’s good advice if you’re listing your favourite pizza toppings or if you’re quickly throwing together a one pager. But for legal documents, consider both buttons to be evil — think of them as a curse that brings bad formatting karma every time you click one.
The first reason why these buttons are evil is that it’s difficult to predict what exactly they will do. MS Word tries to be helpful and will therefore apply the abstract numbering list that seems most appropriate.
Probably an even more important reason not to use these buttons anymore, is that they completely disregard the use of the paragraph styles that you (or your law firm or company) have defined. When you click the Bullets or Numbering button, you apply “local formatting” to the selected paragraph, instead of selecting a relevant style from the list of predefined styles. This is yet another source of inconsistencies in your document.
A third reason why you don’t want to use these buttons, is that they only allow to specify a single level of bullets or numbers. For legal documents that will have a long lifetime — and, let’s face it, documents often get recycled during many years — it’s quite likely that at some point, someone will want to add a second level to your document. It is then unpredictable which bullet or number MS Word will happen to apply, once again becoming a source of inconsistencies in your document.
All those inconsistencies will add up over time and feed into the dreaded feeling that a document is “broken”, because the numbering jumps around in unpredictable ways, or because there are small variations in the layout.
In its default settings, Word will automatically turn your paragraph into a bullet-list or numbered list when you start typing your paragraph with relevant content. For example, if you type an asterisk * and then a press the spacebar, Word will turn your paragraph into a filled-bullet list. Similarly, if you type a lower or upper “a” followed by a dot or a closing parenthesis, Word will turn your paragraph into an a/b/c or A/B/C list.
The effect is similar to what you would achieve when you would press one of the two dreaded buttons banned above. The advice is therefore: keep doing this auto-formatting for your grocery list, but stop doing it in legal documents, because it leads to inconsistencies and circumvents the use of styles.
You can completely disable the autoformatting by going into File | Options | Proofing | Autocorrect Options… | Autoformat as you type in Word for Windows. Yes, you need to go this deep to disable the helpful standard behaviour of MS Word.
From now on, the “Multilevel List” button is your new friend for applying numbering in legal documents. When clicked, this button shows a dropdown menu, from which you have to choose either Define New Multilevel list... or Define New List Style...
The difference between both options is that Define New Multilevel List... creates an adhoc abstract & concrete numbering list, while Define New List Style... also creates a list style that is associated with that abstract & concrete numbering list.
Using Define New Multilevel List... option costs about 10 seconds of extra work, because you must invent a name for your new list style, type it in the box at the top, then push the Format button in the bottom-left corner and then choose Numbering... to arrive at the dialog box where you can define the actual numbering scheme.
Whichever of the two approaches you took, your new multilevel-list will afterwards end up in the dropdown list.
The main advantage of creating a new list style (instead of relying on the adhoc numbering lists) is that you can assign a name and later on select numbering schemes based on a name, instead of relying on Word’s small visual previews. This name will not only be shown when you hover your mouse over the visual preview in the dropdown list, but will also be shown when you are using paragraph styles; more on that below.
That name will probably not seem like a huge advantage in the short term: the small visual preview of MS Word will usually be sufficiently clear to you when you just created that numbering scheme yourself. But in the long term, particularly when working in a team, using names is a major advantage. After all, it’s so much more clear and more reliable to be able to select something like “Recitals numbering”, than having to choose between several small visual previews that all look suspiciously similar.
Your list style will also carry over when you copy/paste paragraphs between documents. If, for example, you assign the “Recitals numbering” list style to your recital’s paragraphs, and then copy those paragraphs to some other document, the numbering scheme in that other document will style say “Recitals numbering”.
Yet another advantage of creating a new list style is that, well,it has all the advantages of being a style. Similar to paragraph styles, character styles, and so on, you can easily organise your list styles (e.g., embed it in a template), update it, assign a shortcut to it, and so on.
Note that the disadvantage of using list styles is that there exists no possibility to add a list style to the “List library” (at the top of the multilevel dropdown), while it is perfectly possible to add an adhoc multilevel list to that library. It’s unclear why Microsoft disallows list styles to be added to the library, as the “List Library” will easily attract the attention of end-users. If you use list styles in your team, you will therefore have to warn your colleagues that they must almost completely ignore the List Library in the dropdown, and instead focus on the “List Styles” section below.
Whether you choose Define New List Style... (and then click on button Format and choose Numbering...) or instead Define New Multilevel List..., you will see the following dialog box. This dialog will allow you to configure all the levels of an abstract numbering list.
Make sure you hit the More... button in the bottom-left corner so that you can see all the options.
This dialog box looks intimidating, but it’s actually not that bad. Let’s go over the different elements step by step.
The idea is that you define the numbering scheme for up to nine different levels. So before proceeding to any configuration, you first need to select the numbering level, using the level selection list in the upper-left corner.
Next, the most important element is the numbering style — e.g. roman capitals (I, II, III) or decimal numbers (1, 2, 3). When you select a numbering style from the dropdown list, you will see that appear in grey in the text-box with the number formatting above. In that text-box, you can add other characters and symbols — e.g. parentheses, square brackets, periods, etc. But if you like, you can also type in an entire word before or after the central number:
In subsequent levels, you can also include some previous level, by selecting a previous level from the dropdown box with the previous levels. This will cause the previous level to be added to the text-above above, where you can mix it with the current level’s numbering. For example, in the screenshot below, you can see that level 2 repeats the roman capital of level 1, while level 3 repeats both the roman capital of level 1 and the upper letter of level 2. MS Word gives you all the freedom you want here: you can for example choose on level 3 to only repeat the number of level 2, or to include no previous number at all.
The next important element to configure is the paragraph style that you want to link to your numbering level. To do so, simply select the right style from the dropdown menu at the right. It is not mandatory to do so, but for legal documents, you’ll usually always want to create this link. As explained above, the link works in two ways: (1) when you assign a paragraph style to a paragraph it will automatically be tagged with a relevant concrete list, and (2) if you change the level of some numbered paragraph that is already part of a concrete list, then the paragraph style that is associated with that new level will be automatically assigned to that paragraph.
Finally, there are few other settings to configure for each level, but those are fairly straightforward.
The Start at setting allows you to specify that a level must start at a certain number. You will only need to exceptionally change this, e.g. in those rare situations where you want to start from zero instead of one.
The Legal style numbering setting is not relevant in practice, but because we are targeting legal experts, we must obviously spend a few words on this setting. When you activate this checkbox, Word will convert whichever numbering type you happened to choose into decimal numbers. So even if you selected A, B, C, ... as a numbering type, Word will force the number to actually print as 1, 2, 3, ... In practice, there’s no difference with the situation where you would have selected decimal numbers 1, 2, 3, ... as the numbering style, but probably there’s a historical reason why Microsoft leaves that setting in there. It’s probably recommendable to choose decimal numbers and not activate the Legal style numbering setting at all.
The Follow number with setting allows you to choose between a tab, a space or nothing. In practice, you’ll almost always want something between your number and your actual paragraph, so the choice is really between a tab and a space. It’s mostly a stylistic choice: when you indent paragraphs in your document, you’ll almost always want to use a tab suffix because a tab allows you to precise configure where the subsequent text must start. When you use a space as a suffix, it will depend on the width of the number(s) where the text will actually start, so you’ll typically use a space suffix when you don’t indent the paragraphs below.
Note that instead of selecting “Space” in the Follow number with setting, you can also select “Nothing”, but then type in an actual space within the text box at the left.
The settings related to indentation (within the purple frame) allow you to configure how far from the left margin the number itself should be printed (Aligned at), and how much indentation subsequent lines within the same paragraph should get (Text indent at). If you’re using a tab suffix, you can also define the position of that tab (Add tab stop at), i.e. where the main text of the paragraph should appear.
The Text indent at setting directly corresponds to the Left indentation of the paragraph style, while the Aligned at setting corresponds to the sum of the Left and the Special | First line setting of the paragraph style.
For example, if you configure the abstract numbering list so that the number is printed at 3 cm from the left margin, while the rest of the lines of the paragraph should be printed at 1.3 cm:
... then the corresponding indentation setting in the paragraph sets a special first line indentation of 1.7 cm.
If you want to update an existing numbering scheme, you can click on the Multi-level list button and then, in the dropdown-menu that appears, right-click on the name of your numbering scheme and choose Modify.
Alternatively,
The OOXML standard formally allows paragraph-related settings to be configured in both the abstract numbering list and a paragraph style. It is therefore possible to have a paragraph style X that is configured to be indented at 1cm, and link that paragraph style X to some numbering level with the indentation set to 4 cm. According to the OOXML standard, the numbering level’s settings should then win (“override” the paragraph’s style).
The underlying idea is — once again — to offer additional flexibility to users, because it enables users to create multiple abstract numbering lists that link to the same paragraph styles, yet sometimes apply different paragraph layout settings. Depending on the numbering list that you would then apply, the same heading style would end up with different indentation and tab stop settings in different concrete lists.
In practice, this was probably a bridge too far for even power-users. To the best of my knowledge, Word never truly allowed end-users to use this kind of configuration. Instead, Word enforces a one-to-one relation between an abstract numbering lists and paragraph styles. Accordingly, when you change the indentation or tabstop settings of a level of an abstract numbering list that is associated with a paragraph style, that paragraph style’s settings will immediately also get those new indentation & tabstop settings when you click OK. Microsoft probably reasoned that this immediate synchronisation was easier to understand for most users, as the entire numbering approach is already sufficiently complex.
Still, the synchronisation only goes in one direction, from the abstract numbering list to the paragraph styles. When you change the indentation settings of a paragraph style, then the associated abstract numbering list level will not have its indentation settings changed.
To further add to the confusion, there are differences between the current version of Word for Windows on the one hand, and the current Mac version and old versions for Windows on the other hand.
In recent Windows-versions of Word, Microsoft doesn’t allow you to configure a multi-level numbering scheme when you’re configuring a paragraph style. Instead, you see the following sub-dialog box, which only allows to configure a single level of numbering when you’re inside the dialog box that modifies a paragraph style. Microsoft probably wants you to stop walking in an already confusing alley:
Conversely, old versions of Word for Windows, as well as the current Mac version, did allow for the possibility to edit the multilevel-numbering scheme while you were inside of the dialog box to modify a paragraph style:
In the old versions of Word and in the current Mac-version you can therefore configure some settings of a paragraph style from within the numbering scheme dialog box, while you can also take the opposite route by configuring the numbering scheme when you’re editing the paragraph style.
In light of all this confusion and the interdependencies between paragraph styles and abstract numbering lists, you’re somewhat stuck between a rock and a hard place:
Probably the second approach is still the best due to the better maintainability (as the settings are then synchronised from the abstract numbering list to the paragraph styles), but it doesn’t win by a huge margin.
Within a single abstract numbering list you can only associate one paragraph style with each level, because the dropdown box only allows for a single selection:
This is the reason why even in the most sophisticated law firms, you will see a rigid numbering structure in agreements. The first level acts as a title (usually bold and/or all-capitals), while the subsequent levels appear as body text:
In theory, this rigid structure should be enough. In practice, however, this structure is not flexible enough, because legal experts will often want to do the following (if not in their first draft, then perhaps during the messy back-and-forth of negotiations, and almost certainly when you copy/paste some boiler plate paragraphs into a completely different contract with a different structure):
This structure seems impossible to achieve with paragraph styles, because the paragraphs at level 2 should either be formatted as plain text, or as a title (bold and perhaps all-capitals). This would call for two different paragraph styles, but you cannot have two paragraph styles at the same numbering level. Template designers will simply not offer this possibility (because it would undermine the paragraph styling system), while practicing lawyers will probably not be aware of the cardinal Word-sin they’re committing by simply applying some “local formatting” to the paragraphs at level 2 in order to make them look like a subtitle. Nothing the Formatting Painter tool can’t fix, right?
There is a solution, however, but it’s not known by many Word-users. It’s allowed by the OOXML-standard and we happen to apply it by default in our own drafting advanced product (Clause9), but it is apparently so unknown that we sometimes get angry feedback from template designers that they don’t like this approach because “it gives too much flexibility to the lawyers”. But in practice, legal experts love it, because it solves a very real problem.
The solution is to ensure all heading-styles are in plain text, and are accompanied by special title-styles that inherit from their plain text sibling.
In this solution, Heading 1 Title inherits from Heading 1 — adding bold, all-capitals and a bigger font size to the base characteristics of Heading 1. Similarly, Heading 2 Title inherits from Heading 2, and so on. In the numbering scheme, each level is associated with the plain text headings.
The beauty of this approach is that the title-headings automatically get the number of their plain-text sibling, because they are considered to be situated at the same level.
For some types of legal documents you will want to insert so-called “marginal numbers” (also called “margin numbers” or “marginalia numbers”), i.e. a number placed in the margin of a document, usually to the left or right of the main text body. Typically, these numbers only have one level that is ever-increasing (i.e., is not reset to 1 at some point.)
There are several ways to deal with marginal numbers.
One way to deal with marginal numbers is to create a new multi-level list scheme with a single level, and then associate that single numbering level with a dedicated style (e.g., “Margin Number”). Because MS Word allows you to have multiple parallel numbering schemes in the same document, the marginal numbering scheme will have its own numbering that does not get reset at some title or heading of the main numbering scheme.
This style-based marginal numbering scheme works great if the number must be inserted at the usual location, i.e. to the left side of the paragraph. But it cannot be used if you want to have a sequential numbering scheme where you want to insert the number at some odd location, e.g., in a table column to the left or to the right.
The SEQ-field is a type of field that allows for independent numbering. As is the case with any type of “field” in MS Word, you insert it through the Insert tab of the Ribbon, then the Quick Parts option and suboption Field. Alternatively, you can press Ctrl-F9. (It really seems Microsoft doesn’t want you to find this hidden gem!)
Next, you must find the “Seq” option on the left-side of the dialog box, and click on the Options... button to see all configuration options.
As you can see in the frontmost dialog box, SEQ requests an “identifier” to be inserted after the word SEQ. This identifier is some invented name of a list that you can use — it’s recommended to use a short name without spaces, e.g. “parnrs”.
You can also add a formatting type to the field, by double-clicking on one of the numbering formats in the frontmost dialog box — this results in backslash-asterisk-formattingname. There are also a few other Field Specific Switches, but they are not so important for legal documents, so let’s skip them for the moment.
For example, the following configuration...
... would result in the following field codes, which ultimate result in a / b / c when you would right-click on them and choose Toggle Field Codes:
The LISTNUM-field was introduced as a “more powerful” alternative to SEQ, but many MS Word power users prefer SEQ. The reason that is often mentioned is that LISTNUM would not allow for multiple, parallel number schemes in one single document, but that’s actually not true if you know where to look. Admittedly, the LISTNUM does have the disadvantage that it requires a bit more upfront configuration, while SEQ is configured in an adhoc-style.
Similar to SEQ, you insert a LISTNUM-field through the Insert tab of the Ribbon, and the Quick Parts option and suboption Field. Alternatively, you can press Ctrl-F9. Next, you must find the “ListNum” option on the left-side of the dialog box, and click on the Options... button to see all configuration options.
LISTNUM seems to have less options then SEQ, but it’s actually more powerful than SEQ.
When you would use LegalDefault, you get something that SEQ doesn’t offer, which is a nice little period after the number. This is already an improvement over SEQ, which will require you to manually type in that period. Not a big deal, but you may forget about it when quickly doing copy/paste.
The second advantage is that LISTNUM allows you to have multiple levels. Usually this is not necessary for marginal numbers in legal documents, but it’s good to have the option for when you do need it.
A third advantage is that, when you use your own multi-level list style, you can configure the numbering anyway you want. SEQ allows for some custom number formatting options, but unfortunately using a period (.) within these formatting options does not seem to be allowed. Conversely, LISTNUM allows you to use the familiar numbering scheme formatting dialog box in which you can configure each level however you want.
When you use your own multi-level list style, you must however ensure that exactly the same List name is used as the corresponding box in your multi-level list style configuration. For example, when you would call your list style “MyParNrs”, then also include that exact same name in configuration box...
... and in the LISTNUM configuration dialog.
A fourth advantage is that you can centrally reconfigure the formatting of all your LISTNUM-fields, simply by changing your list style configuration (as described above). The SEQ-fields instead contain formatting codes directly within their field-code, which does not allow for central updates.
A fifth advantage is that, unlike SEQ-fields, you can insert cross-references to LISTNUM-fields.
Finally, and perhaps the most important advantage of all, LISTNUM-fields can be used to increment the numbers of your “main” numbering scheme. For example, let’s assume you have a typical contract structure with a title 1., a sublevel 1.1, a sub-sublevel 1.1.1, etc.
For some strange business reason you now want to insert paragraphs inside of a table that continues the “main numbering”:
You can do so by including LISTNUM fields in the left column of the table. For example, if your list style is called “MyList”, you would insert the following numbers at level 2:
Resulting in numbering that nicely “mixes in” with the main list style’s numbering.
MS Word also has “AutoNum”, “AutoNumLgl” and “AutoNumOut” fields that can also be used for marginal numbering. However, Microsoft warns that these field-types are deprecated and may be removed in future versions of MS Word, so it’s not recommended to use them.
As explained above, list styles require a few seconds more preparation work, but offer so many advantages that it’s almost always a good idea to use list styles instead of adhoc-defined numbering lists. One of these advantages is that you can store list styles inside templates, fostering easy reuse between different documents.
To do, click on the Manage Styles button in the styles panel, and then click on the Import/Export button at the bottom left of the dialog box that appears. (On a Mac, you should instead invoke menu option Format | Style... and then click on Organiser in the bottom-left corner of the dialog box that appears.)
You will then see the Organizer dialog box that shows all styles (also including paragraph styles, character styles, etc.) and allows you to copy styles from one document/template to another. For example, in the screenshot below, you would be able to copy list style Alpha Beta in the currently opened document to the default template (Normal.dotm) that is used for new documents on the computer.
A personal estimate is that about 50% of all legal documents have bad automatic numbering — meaning paragraphs are manually numbered or, even worse, expose a mix of manual and automatic numbering. Fixing the numbering of such documents is therefore a number one request.
The cold and hard reality is that the numbering is usually so fundamentally broken that the only way to fix it is by rebuilding it entirely. This will take a couple of minutes of work, but you are guaranteed that in the end everything will work.
First, you need to configure a new multilevel list and then configure it exactly the way you want, for all the different levels, from within the numbering configuration dialog box.
Next, you need to go through your entire document and assign relevant numbering styles to relevant paragraphs. This may sound tedious, but there are a few things to alleviate the pain:
You can assign a shortcut to each style through the bottom-left button of the style modification dialog box. It is, for example, a good idea to use combinations of Control + Alt + 1/2/3/4/5 to the first 5 levels of heading styles. This way, by simply positioning your text cursor on a paragraph and invoking the shortcut key, you can immediately assign the relevant style.
Two general shortcuts you will want to use are Control + Y and Control + Space (Command + Y and Command + Space on a Mac).
With all these shortcuts, power users can go through a document with their keyboard, using the arrow + Page Up/Down buttons, invoking relevant shortcuts to assign styles to relevant paragraphs.
Another tool you will want to master is the Advanced Find & Replace dialog box, most easily invoked through shortcut Control + H on Windows. (On a Mac, go to menu item Edit | Find | Advanced Find and Replace...). Explaining this entire dialog box would lead us too far, but the most useful option in the context of a renumbering option is to search for paragraphs with a certain style.
You do so by clicking on the More >> button, positioning your cursor within the Find what input box and then choosing Format | Style... and picking the relevant style name. If you don’t fill in anything to the right of the Find what: input box, you can effectively search for paragraphs with that style assigned to it, no matter their textual contents.
You can even swap styles in bulk, by positioning your cursor within the input box to the right of Replace with and again going to Format | Style... and choosing some style to swap with in bulk.
Another interesting use of the Advanced Find & Replace dialog box is to search for paragraphs that don’t yet have a proper style assigned to them, but instead have a lot of local formatting applied to them. You do so by choosing one of the other options in the Format menu in the bottom-left corner (the most likely candidates being Font or Paragraph).
This is in fact a very commonly encountered situation, because so many users over-use the Format Painter tool to copy local formatting from one paragraph to another. Assuming those users have consistently done so, you can then do an advanced Find operation for one or two characteristic formatting features (e.g., Arial + 16pt, if all headings of level 1 consistently have this particular formatting), and then bulk-replace all of them by style Heading 1.
A third way to use the Advanced Find & Replace dialog box is to remove hardcoded numbers. If you happen to have to clean up a document in which users manually typed numbers, instead of using cross-references, then you will need to remove leftover numbers once you assigned proper styles to them.
For example, in the following document, you can see that the user manually typed in numbering.
When you would then assign a multi-level list to this document, you would end up with the number being repeated:
You can get rid of these superfluous numbers by positioning your mouse in the input box to the right of Find what and then choosing the Any Digit option from the submenu that appears when you click on the button Special at the bottom. If you then also type in a dot (.) and a space, you can effectively find all paragraphs that start with some digit and then a dot and a space. With a click on Replace All you would remove that number + dot + space (assuming nothing is filled in to the right of Replace with). Tip: to be really sure that you are not accidentally removing numbers from harmless paragraphs, you may want to limit the scope of your find & search operation to paragraphs with a certain style (e.g., Heading 1), as explained above.
Once you have set up a multi-level list, creating cross-references becomes a breeze. If you’re reading this web page, you probably already know how cross-references work, so we won’t discuss the basics too much, and instead focus on the less obvious aspects.
Essentially, a cross reference is created by going to tab References in the Ribbon and clicking Cross-reference (menu Insert | Cross-reference... on a Mac).
Tip: you probably want to assign a shortcut to this dialog box, because in a typical day of drafting legal documents, you probably want to invoke this at least 20 times. You can do so by going to File | Options | Customize Ribbon | button Customize... on Windows (or menu-item Tools | Customise Keyboard...) on a Mac. Within the dialog box, for to All Commands at the left, and then InsertCrossReference at the right.
Within the Cross-reference dialog box you then select a target (e.g., clause 3.A.a) and hit the Insert button. However, there are a few options you may want to explore within the Insert reference to dropdown box:
The default option is to insert the Paragraph number of your target, which would be 2.1 in the screenshot above. However, you can also choose Paragraph number (no context) and Paragraph number (full context). Those three options will lead to exactly the same output in a document with typical legal-style numbering, such as 1., 1.2, 1.2.3, etc. (i.e. when deeper levels always repeat the higher levels).
Conversely, if your numbering scheme does not repeat higher-level numbers — as is the case with the 3., A., a. in the screenshot above — then those three options will lead to different results.
Another option in the dialog box is to insert both the target’s text and the target’s number. This allows you to achieve the typical legal cross-referencing style where you would insert the title of the clause between parentheses: ... as set forth in clause 3.1 (liability) ... To achieve this, you would type in “clause”, then insert a Paragraph number cross-reference to clause 3.1, then type in an opening parenthesis, then insert a Paragraph text cross-reference to clause 3.1, and finally a closing parenthesis.
You may even go all the way, and also insert the page number of the cross-reference: ... as set forth in clause 3.1 (liability) on page 34 above... The last two elements would be achieved through a Page number cross-reference and an Above/below cross-reference. Most legal professionals will not bother to go this far, but it can be helpful for the reader of your document, and MS Word will maintain the cross-reference automatically, so you never have to update the page number or the word “above/below”, even when the target paragraph would completely move.
Under-the-hood, cross-references are a combination of bookmarks and fields. For example, assume you start from the text below, in which no cross-references have yet been defined. When you would invoke the Bookmark dialog box (through tab Insert of the Ribbon, or the Insert | Bookmark menu-item on a Mac), you would see that no bookmarks have been defined at this point.
When you now insert a Paragraph number cross reference from within clause 6.4 to clause 6.1, and invoke the Bookmark dialog box again and enable Hidden bookmarks, you will notice that a bookmark has been added:
If you are unfamiliar with what bookmarks really are in MS Word: they are invisible codes associated with a certain text fragment — e.g., a single word, or an entire paragraph, or even multiple paragraphs. MS Word uses these bookmarks for several reasons, but in the context of cross-references they are used to point to a certain target paragraph.
If you then right-click on the cross-reference and choose Toggle Field Codes in the popup-menu, you will notice that the cross-reference is a field — i.e., a special type of element in MS Word — of type “REF”, that points towards some bookmark with randomly generated name _Ref178523542.
The \h option corresponds to the Insert as hyperlink option in the Cross-reference dialog box, which you probably always want to keep enabled. The other options are:
Interestingly, you can directly edit cross-references by toggling the field codes. If you would like to mass-convert Paragraph cross-references to Paragraph (full context) cross-references, you would for example simply change the \r to a \w.
Tip: as an advanced MS Word user, you probably want to always show cross-references (and other types of fields) with a grey background, so you can better differentiate between hard-coded numbers and true cross-references (this will particularly help when you are renumbering a bad document). You can do so by going to File | Options | Advanced | subsection Show document content | option Field Shading, suboption Always. On a Mac, go to Preferences... | View | option Field Shading.
Cross-references will “break” for multiple reasons, resulting in the dreaded Error! Reference source not found error.
A first reason is that the target paragraph gets deleted. For example, if clause 6.4 in the screenshot above would refer to clause 6.1 and the user would delete that clause 6.1, then you end up with the following situation:
Unfortunately, MS Word does not dynamically update cross-references — yet another illustration of how old MS Word’s underlying engine really is, because modern computers would be able to recalculate thousands of cross-references in less than a second. This means that you will not notice the broken cross-reference until it would be updated, which either happens when you would print the document, or when you would manually trigger the update (typically by right-clicking and choosing Update Field, or by selecting text and hitting F9 button to force the recalculation of all fields within the selected text). Only then the famous error-message will appear.
A second reason why a cross-reference can break is when the wrong paragraph is targeted. This may sound like a stupid move on behalf of the user, but it actually happens in a subtle way, because users will only partially move the target paragraph.
The bookmarks that are automatically created by MS Word when you insert a cross-reference are associated with the entire text of the paragraph, from the very first character until the last character. When you would triple-click a paragraph, or make generous mouse movements during a selection process, the entire text of the paragraph will get selected. When you then cut the selected paragraph and move it elsewhere, all the cross-references will updated nicely towards the new location.
However, when a user would only partially select a paragraph — i.e., even if your selection would miss only one single character — and then cut the selection, you’re in for trouble, because the paragraph mark will then stay in place and remain the target for the cross-reference. This will typically happen when a user is selecting a paragraph through Shift + right arrow keys, or with too cautious mouse selections.
Tip: This is the reason why the Use smart paragraph selection option (in File | Options | Advanced | subsection Editing options at the top) is on by default. When this is enabled, you will notice during the selection process that the selection will suddenly jump one extra character to the right when you are near the end of the paragraph. This extra character is the invisible “paragraph mark” character that is associated with each paragraph. When MS Word performs this little extra jump in the selection, you know that you’ve selected the entire paragraph, so that you can safely cut & paste it elsewhere without worrying about the cross-references.
In the Mac version, the label is actually clearer: it’s called “Include paragraph marks when selecting paragraphs” under Preferences | Edit.
The bookmark-number of the target-paragraph — i.e. the _REF.... — is completely random. This is by design, as it ensures that the bookmark names are unique, so that two clauses with the same title (e.g., two “General” or “Miscellaneous” subtitles) would not end up with the same bookmark-name.
However, this randomness prevents you from copy/pasting cross-references between documents. Even if the texts of the two documents are completely identical, you will not be able to copy/paste a cross-reference between them. (It will seem to work when you paste the cross-reference, but it will show an Error! Reference source not found. when you would update the cross-reference.)
The only exception is when the target paragraph already exists and has the very same bookmark-number associated with it. In such scenario, the copy-pasting will work perfectly. After all, a cross-reference is simply a pointer to an existing bookmark
You’re not limited to creating cross-references with numbered clauses as the target. For example, you can also create cross-references to footnotes, endnotes, tables, figures, and so on — just select a different Reference type in the Cross-reference dialog box.
In fact, you can create a cross-reference to essentially anything in Word, simply by selecting something and creating a new bookmark around it. Of course, if the item is not numbered, it will not make sense to create a Paragraph number cross-reference, but referring to its page number or above/below will also be helpful for your reader.
For the sake of being exhaustive, I also want to point out that MS Word supports line numbering, which in some jurisdictions is often used in court submissions, such as pleadings, motions, and briefs.
You configure it completely outside of the style-based or field-based numbering. Instead, you configure it through the Layout tab of the Ribbon, and then Line Numbers and the last option Line Numbering Options... (You can also configure how the line-numbering must restart, through the dropdown list here.)
When activated, you will get a layout where the line number is positioned at the left side.
If you want to configure the font of these numbers, you’ll have to go to the Manage Styles dialog box (the button with the letter A and a green checkmark at the bottom of the styles pane), search for the Line Numbers list style. Next, you can change the font. It doesn’t seem possible to change the numbering style (e.g., as Roman numbers), but why would you?
