Hi

I’m trying to set up corporate templates, which I need the lay person to be able to use easily and quickly. I’ve started with a global template, which is to include all my styles, building blocks, macros and autotext, etc. and then from that I will build main templates for letters, reports, forms, etc. (then I need to build templates/documents with standard text in them – there are over 150 of them!). I need for these templates to all follow a similar pattern, in terms of styling, so that a person with very little knowledge of Word can apply the same knowledge to each document, regardless of the template it was built on.

I thought I was fairly knowledgeable on Word, having used it (and been the go-to person) for decades, but I am rapidly thinking otherwise as I delve through blogs and posts on here!

My issue is that across these 150 documents are different multi-level list styles (1 per document). All numbers are to be aligned to the left margin and the text is to start 1.27 (1”) in. (I will probably make the number 1 pt smaller that the text, as really it is only for reference purposes – the crucial bit for the reader to be able to see, is the heading and the body text.)

List Style 1
1.0 Heading 1 (Bold)
1.1 Heading 2 (Bold)
1.1.1 Body text
1.2 Heading 2
1.2.1 Body text

And so it continues. For this list, I have created a List Style and attached H1 to Level 1, H2 to Level 2, Body Text to Level 3 and (no style) for the remainder of the list, in case the report decides to throw in a Heading 4. This list is working well and when I press enter, it goes to the next number in the level, which is perfect for the lay person filling out these documents.

The issue becomes apparent when on some reports, the document headings are set up erratically and do not follow a set standard i.e.:

1.0 Heading 1
1.1 Body text
1.2 Body text
1.3 Heading 2
1.3.1 Body text
1.3.2 Heading 3
1.3.2.1 Body text

Even with reading Shauna’s article re outline numbering (several times over), I am still confused. Even though I clearly do not need all heading styles to be attached to a List Style (I’m saving H6 to H9 for Appendices), do I still need to attach them all? If so, how do I get around the fact that I would then need another list for the Body text? Am I meant to use a second multi-level list for the Body Text? I’ve read one article on here that implies I do, and that I need to effectively duplicate H1-H9 and make them non-bold, but link them to the bold versions. Then on top of that, have 9 levels of body text styles.

I’m so confused by this, I’m sorry. It feels that for the lay person, whose idea of using styles is highlighting text and clicking the bold button, it will be too much to cope with if they have so many different styles that they can’t figure out in which scenario to use them.

If someone was able to explain a solution, I would be extremely grateful.

Thank you in advance.