I am revising a multi-section document with up to 6-digit paragraph numbers, numerous figures, tables, bullets, and other format settings. When I make even the slightest change to a line of text, changes occur throughout the entire document that I do not want. I don't have time to rewrite this thing from scratch to avoid hidden or unwanted formatting, and it is simply futile to make revisions when I have to continually go through the entire document to ensure no unwanted changes have been made. What I need is advice on how to set this document up so that I can freely make changes where they need to be made without effecting totally unrelated parts of the document. I suspect it has something to do with style settings, but I can't figure out exactly what is happening. Frankly, it is driving me nuts!!!!!!

Kristain,

I appreciate you taking the time to respond to my dilemma. Your advice helped considerably. Do you remember how, in previous Word versions, you could turn bullets and numbering on or off without impacting other bullets or numbered paragraphs? That's what I need to do. What's happening now is, when I change just a single word in a line of text, the justification in my entire document changes to center, sometimes the entire content is underscored and bolded, font sizes change, etc. I can't get my head around the notion that Microsoft intentionally inserted code that causes these things to happen. If they did, they deserve to be tortured ruthlessly! It is totally counterproductive, especially when you have a deadline to deliver a smooth product. If I could, I would use Word 2003, and I wouldn't be having these issues. But, this is a work task, and my company uses Office 2007.

Thanks again.

Scott