Multilevel lists deserve a special place in hell. One multi-level list that I created works correctly. The others do not. Ever. I have spent many joyful hours perusing numerous blogs about making them. If someone could correct me in my backwards ways, or tell me where I have gone wayward, I would be eternally grateful. (See the bottom paragraph for more on my gratefulness.)


Here is my method for making one in Word 2010. Its confusing and doesn’t work.

1. The best thing ive figured out is use the Styles to create the multi-level list you like. Click on the little arrow to show the styles pane on the right.

2. Modify as needed, and update the styles to match selections.

3. Remove all the styles you don’t want in the pane above

4. Click on Change Styles, go to Style Set, and save as Quick Style Set with a new name. I’m doing this because I want my styles and my styles only to appear in the Quick Style area. If you tell me to just use Microsoft’s styles, I will not like you, they are ugly and unprofessional. This seems to be the only part I can kind of make work. I don’t know what Save as Default does in the dropdown. I'm scared to try it. It will probably reverse the magnetic poles or something equally awful.

5. When you open a new document, go to Change Styles and pick your newly named set.

6. Hopefully they look the way you left them in the Quick Styles window, although they could totally be bolded or have random numbers in front of them etc. And hopefully there aren’t a bunch of styles there that you already deleted.

7. If you want things to be in order when you use the indent keys, which would make too much sense and is too good to be true, go to the multi-level list button and click on the one that closest resembles yours. You might have 5 Lists in Current Documents even though your document is blank. When the correct one is highlighted, go to Define New Multilevel list.

8. Link each level to the style you want. Its quite possible that the example list will bear little to no relation to what you currently have/want, and when you link your style to each level, it will screw your style formatting unless you make it correct in that pane.

9. When you say ok, cross your fingers and test your multi-level list.

10. If things are wonky, which they probably will be, adjust them yet again and update the style again. It will probably change some of the other styles when you do that, which makes total sense. Fix and update them all individually.

11. Just for fun, go look at the Multi-level List pane again and probably see that all your linking is gone or that half of it is in one list in the Current List area and half is in another list and never the two shall meet. You could try fixing it again.

12. Try saving as a Quick Style again, overwriting your old one of the same name and maybe it will be somewhat close to what you want when you do #5 again. But it probably won’t. If youre lucky, black boxes will cover your numbers, but those are easy to fix by Ctrl/Shft/S and reapplying the same style. Every time you open it.

If someone would like to attempt to make my non-working list work correctly, I would be eternally grateful and would owe you my firstborn child and the dozens of coffee cups of tears I have collected which probably cure carpal tunnel syndrome. I have no idea how to give you either list, but the odds are there is no way to share these things because that would be helpful, which is wrong.
Ive attached docs with each list anyway, even though Im sure they are useless to everyone, including me. The document entitled My multilevel list is the one that works. The document entitled LEED doc list does not.

Joyfully yours,

Shevaun

Attached Files

	my multilevel list.docx (41.6 KB, 59 views)
	LEED doc list.docx (43.1 KB, 30 views)